Rollerdrome can precisely be described as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with weapons. The newest from Roll7, developer of the OlliOlli collection, Rollerdrome is a score-based area shooter, however on curler skates. The sport duties you with skating and capturing your well beyond “House Players,” enemies decked out in spiked armor that will really feel at residence in Mad Max. The presentation of the sport, from the clear, cel-shaded artwork to the pumping synth soundtrack, is designed to lock you into the joys of the titular bloodsport.

In the fiction of Rollerdrome, which is about in an alternate-dimension 2030, this can be a massively common televised sport. You can see why: It’s actually lovely to observe protagonist Kara Hassan get huge air off a half-pipe, nostril seize, then pull out a pump shotgun and knock a sniper off their perch, multi function fluid movement. In a talented participant’s palms, Hassan’s runs by way of the sport’s different arenas appear like an artwork as a lot as a homicide spree.

Image: Roll7/Private Division, Take-Two Interactive through Grayson Morley

This is a sport that feels good to play, which is necessary, given Rollerdrome’s extra critical narrative. Gunplay and skating feed into one another, mechanically: Tricks get you extra bullets, and bullets get you fewer enemies, which in flip helps you do extra tips, which lastly permits you to filter much more enemies. It’s frenetic, compelling, and surprisingly simple to parse, which is necessary as bullets fly by, requiring you to dodge on the final second. Doing so prompts Rollerdrome’s model of bullet time, Super Reflex, which makes even the best kickflip appear like one thing out of the Matrix. [Editor’s note: We now realize that you can’t really do a kickflip in roller skates, and apologize for the error. The grenade launcher distracted us.] From begin to end, the gameplay is as hypnotic as it’s troublesome. You will, undoubtedly, instantly retry a stage proper after beating it, certain that you would be able to kickflip over a baddie with twin pistols blazing only a little higher, because you simply barely missed A-rank.

Rollerdrome needs you to have an absolute blast, and it succeeds. Rollerdrome additionally needs you to know that the “blast” you might be having is in service of Matterhorn, a monolithic company that’s rising more and more pleasant with a fascist police state, and each run you full helps that company good its rising arsenal of weaponry, which they’re, after all, promoting to the police — a indisputable fact that has not escaped the general public’s notion, resulting in a violent rebellion of the working class, a coalition that features some Rollerdrome contributors like your self, who, it’s revealed at first of the sport, enter the game of Rollerdrome by paying a six-figure price, racking up life-ruining debt that the company hangs over them as each menace and promise that they will by no means, ever go away the Rollerdrome.

But good luck remembering that whenever you’re wall-riding with a grenade launcher in your palms!

Rollerdrome’s narrative parts are sequestered from its gameplay. Occasionally, you end up within the locker room earlier than the sport, or on a practice touring to the following spherical of the competitors, studying notes, letters, and conspicuously unguarded memos written by evil capitalists. What you’re studying is all very regarding, however the sport a part of the sport, the half the place you may have enjoyable, is all whoosh, pow, and regardless of the onomatopoeia is for rail grinding. It is solely potential, within the warmth of a Rollerdrome run, to overlook you might be testing weapons and killing (presumably?) prisoners or another deprived class of individuals within the sport’s near-future dystopia. It’s too enjoyable! It’s method, method, method too enjoyable!

Image: Roll7/Private Division, Take-Two Interactive through Grayson Morley

At first blush, it looks like the 2 sides of Rollerdrome aren’t speaking to one another. The seriousness of the story isn’t in sync with the pure adrenaline sweet of its gameplay. Unlike Inscryption or Papers, Please — different video games that make you concentrate on what it’s you might be doing — Rollerdrome’s gameplay seems to not reinforce the important, political narrative, however to obscure it. But the extra I performed, the extra it made sense that getting into the Rollerdrome would erase all however my adrenaline and need to win. If Rollerdrome, the in-fiction sport of Rollerdrome, weren’t this a lot enjoyable to play or to observe, how might it presumably overshadow the machinations of faceless monoliths who want to management and subdue the general public right into a state of give up? Rollerdrome should then be so enjoyable to play that one wouldn’t need to dissent, even when one had been so inclined.

So, anyway, yeah, Rollerdrome is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with a gun, nevertheless it’s additionally a commentary on the capability of violent leisure to boring our senses to the violence in our precise lives. Good luck remembering that whenever you’re chasing an S-rank rating.

Rollerdrome was launched on Aug. 16 on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The sport was reviewed on PlayStation 5 utilizing a pre-release obtain code supplied by Deep Silver. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. You can discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.