![]() ![]() The chase for higher scores keeps you coming back for more, so it's unfortunate that the game's leaderboards don't allow for much analysis or comparison with your friends. A fakie ollie is not a nollie, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise! Don't choke and fall down the first set of stairs you come to when the pressure is on, not that I'd know from experience or anything. You can practice as much as you want, but you get only one chance to make your mark on that day's challenge. Likewise, the joy of success tends to be followed up by the thought of, "I bet I could keep my combo going longer if I could get just a little more height off this jump." This comes together in the Daily Grind mode, which presents everybody with a single stage and one day to set a high score with a single combo. Retrying a stage is possible instantaneously by tapping the Vita's screen, and the short nature of the levels makes it hard to resist quickly restarting when you screw up. OlliOlli is tough, but fair, and with practice, even the craziest tricks and combos are at your fingertips. Most levels last little more than a minute, but making it to the end intact may take many tries, even if you're not trying to accomplish anything else at the time.Ī good sense of timing is your most important skill.Īs frustrating as it can be when you bail on a combo you've been working on for an entire level, there's an exhilaration that comes when you finally nail it. One major difference, however, is that OlliOlli's stages are not timed. Each stage has a set of goals for you to complete, ranging from basic high-score targets to tasks like collecting items, grinding specific objects, completing a stage without pushing a specific trick, and so on. Once you get past the unique way OlliOlli controls, there are a lot of comparisons to draw between it and the Tony Hawk franchise. A good sense of timing is your most important skill. For the game's harder challenges, nailing perfect landings is more of a requirement than a suggestion. To further complicate things, you are rewarded with a perfect landing bonus (which rewards you with a burst of speed) if you wait until the very last moment to stick a landing or start a grind. But it's amazing how often you can forget such a simple step or accidentally move the analog stick to grind when you really mean to land on solid ground. Like the trick controls, landing is very simple on paper: hit X before you hit the ground. One of the toughest things to get used to in OlliOlli is the act of landing. A built-in "tricktionary" contains a handy list of them all. Don't worry if you can't remember how to do a specific trick or grind, though. Holding either of the shoulder buttons lets you spin while doing tricks, opening up even more possibilities. Nail that landing, and you could call yourself the Dominique Dawes of skateboarding.įlicking the analog stick in various directions again while in the air allows you to grind on a variety of surfaces, including handrails and futuristic billboards this is an absolute necessity if you want to keep combos going, which is key in getting the highest point totals. OlliOlli earns a place among skateboarding's gaming greats. The act of releasing the stick initiates the trick, so you do a lot of flicking and releasing as you skate through environments. Simply moving it up or down ollies, moving it to the right kickflips, and fighting-game-esque circular motions perform more advanced stunts. The vast majority of your tricks, everything from your basic ollie (or jump, if you're not familiar with the skateboarding term) to your complex 360 inward heelflip, are accomplished by moving the left analog stick. The stages are set up as one long run through decidedly non-skate-park environments-there are no halfpipes or pools to spend time in. You begin each stage already in motion, though you can shove with a tap of the X button if you find yourself in need of more speed. Seemingly simple controls allow for surprising complexity, and it can take a while to get used to performing and, more importantly, landing tricks. ![]() While OlliOlli is overall a very difficult game to master, on the surface its 2D gameplay is more approachable than most of its 3D skateboarding counterparts. With an absorbing trick system and rapid-fire stages that are perfect on the go, OlliOlli earns a place among skateboarding's gaming greats. OlliOlli, a 2D skateboarding game for the Vita, continues the tradition of defying both death and gravity with over-the-top stunts. The Tony Hawk games were popular in part because they let you do things that Tony Hawk himself could not do, whether that was effortlessly pulling off a complex trick while jumping over a helicopter or grinding on top of tall buildings. Many of the best skateboarding video games have traditionally had little to do with the sport of skateboarding itself.
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