Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

OlliOlli is a side scrolling skateboarding and extreme sports game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Roll7 released OlliOlli on PS Vita in January 2014 to much critical acclaim and also winning GameSpot’s Game of the Month Award for January 2014, but the ultimate question has to be if the PS4 version improves on the foundations that were laid by the original PS Vita release.

The career mode tasks the player with completing five challenges across each of the five levels within each of the five environments, which totals to 125 challenges, which are available in amateur and pro and allows the player to unlock a spot for each level were they able to complete all of the five challenges.

The spots mode has a significant twist to it in comparison to the career mode as the objective is no longer to complete set challenges, but is instead to earn the highest possible combo achievable across each of the twenty-five levels unlocked from prior success in the career mode.

There are collectables spread across each of the five unique environments called golden skateboards, which will make players search for alternative routes to find them with only one golden skateboard hidden amongst each of the five stages; resulting in players having a harder time finding them due to their sporadic positioning.

There are a total of over 120 tricks and grinds that are all detailed in a feature called Tricktionary that provides a full detailed listing of all of the tricks and grinds and how exactly players attempt to perform them. The tricks category gives instructions on how to perform variations of ollies, flips, 360s and spins, while the grinds category instructs on how to perform variations of slides and grinds with an animation to the left of the guidelines to the point of showing how the shape and form of the skater should look as they are attempting to perform the appropriate trick or grind.

However, the tutorial goes one step further than that of the Tricktionary as the tutorial actually provides instructions followed by allowing practice to each individual move as many times as possible to do so until you have perfected the trick before moving onto the next one, therefore providing the player with the best opportunity to learn as they progress, which is highly recommend before even attempting to enter any event or beginning any of the game modes. It is very important for future success in performing the tricks and grinds and ascending through the game to follow the tutorial step-by-step throughout all of its eight categories including: pushing; the basics; advanced tricks; grinds; rails and ledges; combos; perfect grinds; and spins.

There are five unique environments including: Urban, Junkyard, Port, Base and Neon City with all five surroundings containing five levels across various areas of those environments, which is a great design choice as it keeps the general aesthetic of the game looking fresh throughout each of the twenty-five levels. All the areas are fairly self-explanatory as The Urban environment is built up with a lot of buildings and residencies, while the Junkyard is exactly that with plenty of cars piled high for scrap; the Port is a harbour with lots of boats docking along it; the Base is an army base with tanks and military defences surrounding it; and the Neon is an entire city glowing with bright neon lighting.

Daily Grind allows the player the opportunity to practice as many times as they want to on a different spot everyday with the twist being that when it is felt as though enough practice has been done in order to be confident with the run of tricks that can put together; as there is only one shot at setting the personal best high score for that particular day in a competition with the entire world for who can set the best run and earn the most points in doing so.

OlliOlli supports the share feature that allows upload of a video clip or screenshot to Facebook or Twitter and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as players are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of their choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so there is still have the chance to decide if players would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between your game footage and your reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

OlliOlli supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4, PS3 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that players will be purchasing the PS4, PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows players to sync the progression of the save file from the Vita to the PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so players can start playing the game on the Vita on the way to and from work, sync the save game when returned home and then resume were they left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading the save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.

As can be imagined with a skateboarding game; there are plenty of tricks and therefore dozens of control variations, which results in an extensive control scheme that uses almost every button on the controller as well as the dual analogue sticks, although fear not as the equally as extensive tricktionary and tutorial features will teach how to perform the tricks and grinds in an attempt to help perfect them. The touch pad implementation is used as an easily accessible restart button, so it can restart the run if the player is not happy with it in any of the modes that allow the restart the run at any given time, while the DualShock 4 controller vibrates after pretty much everything the player does, such as increasing speed, starting a trick or grind and landing them or even after a face plant into the ground following a rather hefty crash. There is no light bar implementation, which is surprising as it could have produced colours to tie in with the on screen colour behind the analysis of the quality of the trick or grind that has been attempted to land, such as red for a sloppy attempt, blue for a sick rating or green for a perfect rating.

The graphics are certainly a throwback to the retro generation with pretty good animations for the skater and some great backdrops, alongside a decent variation of colour that collectively provide a modern flare to the otherwise retro feel of the game, although the vast quantity of the graphics are most certainly retro influenced, which actually adds a visual charm to the game.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface that is navigated by the face buttons with support for the left analogue stick and directional pad across various menus such as the main menu, level selection, tricktionary, tutorial, online leaderboards, options and gameplay menus, although there is no support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad. The background to the majority of the menus is chequered black and white along the lines of what would be expected from a flag at the finishing line of a race, while the level selection menu changes to the backdrop of that particular environment you have highlighted.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including the skateboard moving along the ground or a surface, grinding along rails or rolling along after the player has crashed, while the funniest part of the audio being the crunching sounds when the skater has just performed a major face plant along the ground or surface that  was attempted to grind, alongside a varied soundtrack of jazz and dance music playing in the background from such acts as The Qemists, Dorian Concept and Flako to provide another layer to the audio.

The trophy list includes twelve trophies with eight bronze, three silver and one gold trophy. The majority of the list is hard to accomplish but there are a few trophies that can be naturally earned along the way due to accumulation, such as the Land Lover bronze trophy for achieving a total of 1,000 perfect landings; the Make Your Mark bronze trophy for setting a score on 25 different spots; and the Locked On bronze trophy for achieving a total of 1,000 perfect grinds. However, there are significantly harder trophies, such as the So Many Points silver trophy for landing a two million points combo in career mode; the Hit the Spot silver trophy for getting a score of two million points on a spot; and the hardest trophy of all has to be the Totally Rad gold trophy for completing every level on Rad Mode, which is a difficulty level that is even harder than the amateur and pro difficulty levels and is unlocked after you have completed all of the levels in both the amateur and pro difficulty levels. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips and that it would take between ten to twenty hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are amateur and pro difficulty levels in the spots game mode, although the amateur difficulty will not feel as easy as might be anticipated if players just dive head long into any of the game modes, rather than taking the time to learn the game. It is absolutely essential to invest time into learning the tricks and grinds and if decided against that, then players will quite simply never be able to earn a high score and even when tricks and grinds are started to being learned; it will certainly not be easy as OlliOlli has a rather steep difficulty curve, although it makes it all the more rewarding when finally the summit has been reached and perfecting all of the tricks and grinds pulled off which leads to more successful high scores. However, the difficulty curve increases even further as the hardest difficulty level is the Rad Mode, which is unlocked after all of the levels have been completed in amateur and pro difficulty levels, which provides another significant increase in difficulty equal to that of the difference between amateur and pro difficulty levels.

There is no local or online multiplayer component, which is surprising as any type of sports lends themselves so well to competitive or co-operative multiplayer. Split-screen competitive multiplayer for between two to four players with multiple game modes seeing all involved scrapping it out to achieve the longest timed run without crashing, the longest combo or the best high score would have added a lot to the game; as would co-operative multiplayer for multiple players to have their attempts locally combined together for team based multiplayer, while all of these forms of multiplayer could have translated well into online multiplayer and pass the controller multiplayer too.

However, there are online leaderboards which focuses on global rankings, friends rankings across all of the twenty-five levels with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and score with the positioning of each player based upon the score that has been accumulated on that particular level of the game.

The replayability is produced from many areas, such as the career and spots modes, learning the extensive range of tricks and grinds to the point of perfection in order to succeed in the career and spots modes, while the Rad Mode difficulty level unlocked after completing all of the levels in amateur and pro difficulty levels provides an even greater test of skills and adds another reason to play through all of the levels again, alongside searching for collectables in the form of golden skateboards.

Overall, OlliOlli has a retro charm running through the core of the game from the graphics to the tough difficulty curve of only having one chance to perform before having to restart the level following any major mistake. OlliOlli is certainly highly recommended for any fan of skateboarding as there is plenty of content to keep players coming back for more and the retro charm provides that one more play vibe to the gameplay making it addictive as ever and with such exceptional value as a £7.99 triple cross-buy purchase for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita versions; this is an indie game that should not be missed.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: OlliOlli
• Developer: Roll7
• Publisher: Devolver Digital/Roll7/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE)
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4, PS3 and PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Players: 1 (Online Leaderboards)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 118MB