Its arcadey action and lack of approximation of the actual realities of skateboarding helped inform myriad titles in the Playstation and PS2 era, spawning clones like Grind Session and Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX. Tony Hawk still stands as the most well-known name despite its floundering relevance in recent years – and rightfully so, given the pedigree of some of the series’ best titles like Pro Skater 2. There’s been a lot of different interpretation of skating to varying degrees of success in the history of gaming.
With smart enhancements to the series’ trick system, local multiplayer, and smart leaderboard integration, the lower barrier to entry on the PC platform means there’s never been a better time to enjoy some stripped (and laid) back skateboarding. The game and everything to like within it has survived the port to the PC with smooth technical performance, and its low asking price makes it an easy recommendation for both returning players who wish to enjoy the game in higher fidelity and newcomers who haven’t yet experienced what the series has to offer.
The original OlliOlli followed in the footsteps of these titles when it was released to critical acclaim and cult popularity last year, and OlliOlli 2 helped build upon these concepts in satisfying and well-realized ways during its original release on the PS Vita and PS4 earlier this year. In fact, there’s been a resurgence of this design ethos of simplicity recently, particularly in local competitive titles, with games like Samurai Gunn, Nidhogg, and Towerfall all sharing similar ideologies of stripped-back, level-playing field competitive mechanics that are dead-simple to understand but lend themselves to potential high levels of difficulty and mastery. The elimination of barriers to entry, complicated combos, and the minutiae necessary to master a Street Fighter or a Mortal Kombat helped create one of the most interesting and minimalist competitive experiences in the past few years. Divekick was a fascinating experiment by Iron Galaxy that stripped away the execution, specials, and meta-strategy of fighting games so that what remained was a minimalist experience that nonetheless felt competitive and thrilling, and lent itself to a surprising amount of depth and control over the flow of a match. Overall I think your $30 is best spent elsewhere, unless you really want to experience a platformer that involves skating, and even then there are other games I'd rather recommend before this game.I’ve always enjoyed the idea of distilling a game that lends itself to inherently complicated mechanics down to its essence. I understand that it's a platformer and not meant to be played for it's story, but Jesus Christ the writing and the characters are just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lame it made me want to stop playing the game at times. The writing is really cringey and lame, I couldn't bear it. The problem with these is that they don't really do anything, other than to increase your score at the end of the stage and sometimes fulfill extra challenges within the stages. Meaningless complexity there are advanced tricks/combos that you can pull off, which adds some depth to what I would consider to be otherwise simple and uninvolved gameplay.
The levels are short, about 2-3 minutes but the 5 different worlds are full of these levels and they don't do a whole lot to differentiate themselves from each other. Vibrant, colorful and detailed level design I'm a huge fan of platformers but this wasn't doing it for me.