OlliOlli World Review: ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Crossed With Adventure Time’

OlliOlli World review for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

In the past two OlliOlli games, an engrossing gameplay loop of combo-ing impossibly long grinds and improbably extreme tricks was teamed with jarringly drab visuals. Looks aren’t everything, but with its low-rent pixel art, an otherwise stellar series struggled to stand out. With OlliOlli World, developer Roll7 has finally settled on an art style that works — so now we have Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater crossed with Adventure Time.

Sk8r joi

Well, not quite. While any skateboarding game will immediately find itself compared to THPS, OlliOlli World provides side-scrolling action across shorter stages that players are encouraged to complete in one lengthy single combo. Tricks are chained together and then multiply, as players kickflip off ramps and then latch onto rails, racking up points that then determine their position on global and friends-only leaderboards. Helpfully, every run featured on these leaderboards can be replayed, meaning that you can watch your friends take on the same course or eye up each course’s leaders.

Whereas the first two OlliOlli’s were tough to pick up and brutal to master, OlliOlli World makes its skating way more accessible. There are checkpoints in each level, letting you pick up from where you left off when you bail, and progress is rarely hindered by you needing to achieve a certain score. Its new visuals are also indicative of this, with the aforementioned pixel art replaced with charming Saturday morning cartoon vibes, borrowing heavily from the art of Adventure Time and The Midnight Gospel creator Pendleton Ward. This also opens up a wealth of customization options, too, as your friendly-looking player character can be equipped with a variety of clothes, taunts, and styles to make them stand out from the crowd. Some of the game’s best customization options are locked behind difficult challenges, so you have an incentive to push for higher scores outside of simple bragging rights.

But that doesn’t mean OlliOlli World is easy. While its new hub world of Radlandia — which players navigate as they would an overworld in a platform game — is way more inviting to look at, it still has the propensity to be disarmingly difficult. There are various stages throughout its five mini-worlds that require incredible precision, as you have to ensure you maintain momentum to avoid pitfalls while also pulling off tricks to increase your combo. Sure, checkpoints give you a safety net and these levels don’t come close to some of OlliOlli 2’s more insurmountable challenges, but it’s still a tough game when it wants to be.

Fortunately, the precision necessary to make your way through these difficult levels is firmly manageable thanks to its smooth-like-butter controls. Tricks are pulled off with a flick or turn of the left analog stick, while grabs are initiated by holding the right stick. To successfully land a trick or pull off a manual, players press the A/X button in time with their board touching the ground. As was the case in the previous OlliOlli’s, the goal here is to land ‘Perfect’ tricks by successfully timing your board meeting the ground or rail. When timed properly, players can pull off huge combos that won’t end until you reach the finish line. Muscle memory is key here, and after a few hours, you find yourself reflexively leaping between rails and performing a Backside 540 Shove straight into a Fakie 5-0 One Foot.

At least in Gnarvana I can skate

The number of modifications you can make to your tricks adds another layer of depth, too. When on a rail you can flick the right stick to transform your grind into a ‘Rad’ move, while pressing the triggers rotates you clockwise or anti-clockwise for you to start adding 360s and 180s into your repertoire. There are so many little tweaks you can make to a run to improve your score, and revisiting old levels with new lessons learned is a satisfying indicator of how much you’ve progressed. There’s also alternate ‘Gnarly’ routes to go down in many stages, meaning that no two runs will ever look the same. I can’t wait until my friends leaderboard is filled out with more players, as the endgame here is going to be leaving my pals in the dust.

Thankfully, an asynchronous multiplayer mode has filled in the gap before I start trying to out-skate my Steam friends list. The wonderfully-named Gnarvana is where players can take on others in an ongoing season, with specific rewards being handed out for success in its multiplayer mode. The Gnarvana League sees players matched up against others in a league table, where they must each take on a course. Your score compared to your opponents’ is what determines if you’ll be promoted or not. Each event in a season sees players competing on one level, trying to maximize their score. They can repeat this level as many times as they want, trying to climb to the top of the leaderboard before the event finishes.

Then there’s the Gnarvana portal, which provides randomized stages in accordance with a player’s requests. For instance, a player can select a ‘Chill’ course with an ‘Endurance’ length, and then they’ll be put on a simple but long level. The passcode for this course can then be shared and/or favorited, ensuring others can give it a try, too. While a synchronized multiplayer mode would have been nice — seriously, H-O-R-S-E would have worked so well here — clocking on each day and checking my place in the Gnarvana League offers a great deal of replayability.

But while OlliOlli World’s new additions make it a significant step up from previous entries, not every new feature is implemented as successfully. Your journey through Radlandia is carried along by a cast of oddball characters with names like Gnarly Mike and Dad, who take you through a tale where you’re looking to impress the skateboarding gods. These brief cutscenes, where the characters stand around talking to you before you begin a run, are firmly skippable. Even if this looks like Adventure Time, don’t expect a similar level of quality with its story here.  Fortunately, the story and its cast of zany but forgettable characters don’t weigh down the action.

OlliOlli World Review: The final verdict

OlliOlli World finally sees the series’ visual style matching its frenetic, fun gameplay. Mostly every new feature added by Roll7 works in its favor, providing a satisfying and impressively deep skateboarding game with immense replayability, tons of customization options, and a fun multiplayer mode. OlliOlli has always been slept on as a series, but with World, this could — and hopefully will — all change.