It has been a good year for Roll7: the British study published at the beginning of the year Olliolli World , surely its best game and one of the most outstanding releases of 2022, and not only have they had time to surprise with another game, the intelligible roller dome, but have been expanding the skate arcade with two expansions, void riders and this new Finding the Flow zone , with which they close the expansion pass, put an end to Olliolli World and leave it prepared for A last walk through the media before the lists of the best of the year begin to flourish. I do not know how they will have lived from within, but it is pleased, from here, to enjoy the production of a study that seems to have an infinite creative capacity.
The Finding The Flow zone proposal is simple: a collection of new advanced levels, with more challenges, more collectible and more opportunities to do Tricks impossible taking advantage of the air currents around which the new routes rotate. These air currents are a less groundbreaking idea than those introduced in Void Riders; They do not change so drastically the approach to the levels, and are usually used to give accusers or to invest the direction in which you move. There are times when they are used in more unexpected or twisted ways, but they are the least; Perhaps I would have liked to see more of these, but it is difficult not of the advanced uses that can be found at the new levels) possibly the result would have been too baroque, too much as a setback of what happens in the rest of the game.
Olliolli World analysis
It is the way in which all these ideas, new and old, which ends up giving the pop touch to the set are emphasized. ESA Worldof the title refers to the world that you are going through throughout the game, as you advance by levels; It is a relatively small and contained world, but that manages to be consistent-there is a cartoon, characters, the feeling that you are really moving towards something and going through a living and inhabited territory-and seem gigantic: each level has its particularity, its Inhabitants, SU_ gimmick , something that distinguishes it from others, and as you advance they also add ideas at a good pace, expanding the list of pieces with which they are built with jumps andrails _Holy large, alternative routes, posters and Candelas on which to do wall rides ,Quarter Pipeswhich allow changing the direction of the march. It is a real banquet of ideas that are built on the basis of the originals but that go much further, and that take advantage of the jump to the 3D to gain a depth that does not stay on the surface or in the purely aesthetic: the playable jump It is equally important or more, and Roll7 gets the difficult feat of winning accessibility without waiting for the game or making the skill roof lower.
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Because, separate hypothesis, the truth is that again Roll7 proves to have a surprisingly clear idea of what he wants to get with Olliolli World and how he wants to do it; There is a rhythm, some pesos, a concept of the multicar level as a place to explore, to overcome and finally to squeeze in search of high scores, which is immediately recognizable. The sensation is even more marked in Finding The Flow zone, which seeks to function as a review and climax of all the ideas that are proposed throughout the main campaign levels. Each area of the four that make up the DLC seeks to reflect, from the clouds, what happens in the field underneath, with a triumphal outcome in the radlántida that works as a final test in which to demonstrate that you know well all the mechanics of Olliolli World
They are all bright levels, fun to the first and amazing when you repeat them several times in search of the map pieces, three per level, which allow you to continue advancing through the kingdom of the clouds. The extreme routes are as extreme as ever, and this time there are also routes to die, as the game calls them, more difficult to find and even more difficult to overcome. These optional routes are the most obvious way to find pieces of map, but the great design of Olliolli World makes them end up being, when there are no longer collectibles in sight, the best way to gain time of rail and manual to expand combos and accumulate points. In that sense, they are undoubtedly the most difficult levels to score; Not only have many tricks to be done in very little space, as in others, but you have to do them in sections full of very tight, rails that require millimeter precision and changes of direction that turn the route into a labyrinth in which it is more Difficult to never get to the goal in a single combo.
Only one level has caused me something like a disappointment: the last. It is a long level, in which all the obstacles of the game are mixed, demanding and full of very spectacular moments; To top it off there is no checkpoints, so there is no other than to do it from beginning to end. But I have the feeling that it could have been a bit more difficult: perhaps unjustly difficult, excessively difficult, surprisingly difficult. I would like to have had to dedicate an hour, two, one whole day to finish that last level, have crowned as a radlántida champion sweating blood. I would have liked Roll7 to have released the mane and betrayed for once the exquisite balance that guides all Olliolli World and a more explosive final Tracey would have been allowed.
Olliolli World Analysis: Void Riders
_ That is possibly the best news of Void Riders : The confirmation that Olliolli World is not exhausted. With this DLC, Roll7 demonstrates that what they achieved with the third installment of the series was not a coincidence or luck, but the fruit of years of study and reflection, of a deep knowledge of the virtues of games that were born as a sympathetic fun for Fans of the precise and compact arcades and that has ended up shaping one of the most resounding video games of the year.
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Do not be misunderstood: if you are like me, and you find a special pleasure in squeezing each level of Olliolli World, completing them as thoroughly as possible and even, if it is third, climbing by the leaderboards based on memorizing and dominating each section of Obsessive way, Finding The Flow zone is an essential. I like that Roll7 has thus raised the expansion pass, with a mixture of new ideas and situations simply more difficult, designed for those of us already know the main campaign of PE A PA; It can be played as a continuation of the basic levels, but the study is clear that everything is not worth it to put things difficult and the same rigor in the design applies to the entire game, the main and the expansions. It is an approach to the very sensitive and intelligent difficulty, worried about being consistent and grateful and not only for going further because they can. If I have to stay with something, I stay with that; But how far Roll7 could have arrived if I had decided to go one step further? What would have happened if, for once, they would have transcended their own limits and would have made-to find that-the possible and even the impossible, if the impossible is possible?
I fantasize again. Finding The Flow zone invites you to do it; It may help to know what is the last stop of one of the games that I have enjoyed the most this year. Closing his Skater fantasy in style, Roll7 gets with this second DLC to raise-literally-Olliolli World a little more, and incidentally serves to have it a little more present when remembering the best thing that has left us this 2022 that is not precisely little assorted of good games. For many years of skate more!
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