Rollerdrome Preview – My Rollerdrome Preview Is Late Because I Can’t Stop Playing It

It’s Tuesday morning. I’m late. I’ve missed the embargo deadline for Rollerdrome. Across the games press, website authors have already published previews and stories about their time playing Roll7’s blood-packed sports title. 

But I can’t stop playing Rollerdrome. 

Instead of writing, this time I queue for the Barbican Arena competition. This is the final leg in my six level demo. Level 1 is in a long tunnel filled with red light that’s claustrophobic. Everything I require is available to me –Rollerskates with a shotgun –To put on the performance of a lifetime. There are the sounds of people clapping together, and an unsettling metronome calling me forward past the metal-latched mouths of the arena. They paid for a show, and I’m going to give it to them.

Rollerdrome is an organized blood sport funded by a multinational corporation in a future dystopia. Challengers travel the globe, competing in industrial arenas to climb the ranks of a televised competition – all to distract the public from a grim reality. All match-ups share a similar, yet effective formula. Drop into an arena, shoot corporate-owned militia units and then skate for your life. It’s like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater but with guns. It’s great. 

Everyone in the arena wants you dead. All of the arena’s enemies are always looking for you. One of the game’s challenges is to know when to strike or evade, a hard lesson I learned after a few deaths. To generate more ammunition, perform skating tricks if you are short of time. Are you low on health? You can quickly escape from danger by killing enemies or regenerating your health with grinding nearby rails. To close the distance, you can gain air from a halfpipe nearby if a sniper nest seems too far away. 

Rollerdrome is fast-paced and full of spectacle, but it’s never unmanageable, thanks to the game’s bullet-time feature. You can activate bullet time at almost any point in the game. This allows for everything to slow down which gives you more time to plan cinematic shots. Some weapons come with secondary mechanisms that can activate in slow-motion. The shotgun, in particular, has a fatal slug shot requiring an additional timed button press similar to an active reload, and it’s delightful to wield. Bullet time is a great way to toggle between slow-motion and realtime, while stringing together multiple combos. It creates a relaxing flow state that I will never let go of.  

“Kara Hassan: Match Victory,” a faceless commentator announces after I extinguish the last of my opponents in the arena.

It’s too early to share a final judgment – I’ve only played a small demo of a larger project – but Rollerdrome could be in the running for the best-feeling game of the year. We’ll have to wait to find out when it releases on August 16.