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The story stuff just gets in the way & I wish there were more remixes, & maybe they could have included a few of the swipe-based DS games, but it's just very nice to have all the best rhythm heaven minigames in one place. Probably my favorite Nintendo franchise, bummer that it doesn't have more of a following & is probably dead for the foreseeable future
Captures the feel of Tony Hawk movement better than any other game I've played. Got some very small quibbles about the weapon & enemy design but it's still lightyears better than modern combat games like Doom, God of War, Spiderman (not least of which because it's very clear about when you're going to get attacked from off screen) and it's incredible how well it blends together the movement, gunplay, tricks, and scoring systems. Like playing recent games with similar systems has made me question if it was even possible to make those things cohere in the way that I want, since I would always find 1 or 2 major issues preventing them from gelling together, but Rollerdrome is a good reminder that that cohesive design is actually possible when your game isn't stuffed with needless progression/loot/gacha systems to pad out playtime. Only real issue with the game is that its budget is very clear. There's def enough here to justify the price, but I want more. The budget is also clear in the story/theming. The music & visuals sell the 70s dystopian bloodsport thing well, but there isn't much of anything to the story, no commentary or narration during gameplay, and it reuses 1 boss twice. All told I love it, but I couldn't help but compare it to my GOTY last year, BoomerangX, which is similarly scoped, similarly excellent in it's gameplay feel & systemic cohesion, but in using a more abstract theme that doesn't need as big of a budget to pull of as what Rollerdrome is going for, Boomerang feels like a full, cohesive experience, that almost transcends its mechanics, while Rollerdrome feels like an excellent collection of levels.
The handful of frustrating or confusing levels or ones that just exacerbate the issues with the camera stand out in my head a lot, but the 90 other ones are a joy and even those "bad" ones are usually interesting or weird or silly in a way that I can appreciate with some distance. Really every level is going for something and I respect the hell out of that. The pure joy of moving the ball & interacting with the physics never gets old, even when the objectives are obtuse, and the story and aesthetic wrapper is just pure goofy fun. Woulda probably liked my playthrough more if I'd started on the steam deck, playing on a tv mainly for the first half made it hard to pick up & try a level and I think this structure is much better suited to being able to pick at in short bursts.
Perfect little phone game. Wish it was longer. Really wish that Downwell had had similar touch focused controls instead of just virtual buttons. Kinda lame that we gotta have subscriptions to get this style of game without disgusting monetization but I guess it’s better than nothing.
Pretty dang good overall but most of my issues come from the fact that it's using Doom 2016 as the base for the movement and gunplay. The arenas of almost random enemies spawning without much real level design feels more forgivable here, though, since the moment to moment gameplay is much more engaging because of the rhythm systems, which it pulls off way better than any other game of this type I've tried (tho maybe I should give BPM another shot someday).
