Like A Perfect Grind, OlliOlli World Seeks Balance

gamespot.com:

There have been a lot of moments when OlliOlli World has made me want to throw a controller across the room, but none quite so much as the time I had to race a lazy cartoon bear down a river. You barrel down a forested hill decked out with skatepark accouterments, while the bear floats idly on some speedy downhill rapids in a relaxing inner tube. First one to the bottom wins. There is no indication that the bear is aware a race is taking place.

After at least an hour of attempts on the approximately two-minute level, I completed it, besting the bear without smashing into any rocks or sailing off a ledge and into the water below. My reward was a random cosmetic item and a checkmark on OlliOlli World's rundown of the biome's challenges--as well as, I like to think, a little extra button-smashing mastery of the game's mechanics.

What's important to understand about the bear race, however, is that I didn't need to complete it. This was a side level, off the critical path, that offered a heightened degree of intensity and a greater challenge. I beat my head against it for an hour for, more or less, no reason--except that it existed and I wanted to beat it.

That's a balance OlliOlli World developer Roll7 has worked hard to maintain, and this became very apparent in my latest hands-on preview of the game, in which I played through three of the game's five biomes and tried out its asynchronous online multiplayer features. OlliOlli World is definitely the most approachable game in the side-scrolling skateboarding series; while it maintains the games' mechanics, like executing tricks with intricate flicks of the analog stick and landing them with a button press timed with your impact, it loosens the requirements to stay on your