Olliolli World Advance: Welcome to Radland
The Olliolli series, acclaimed by criticism, known for its magisterial distillation of Skateboarding to its more twisted and necessary parts, will return with the launch of Munro Elliott next month. And if for a minute you think that the Roll7 developer has been sleeping in the laurels since the launch of olliolli2: Welcome to Hollywood in 2015, well, there is a reason why the new title abandoned the obvious numerical advance in favor of something a lot More expansive.
During the last weeks, comicbook.com has been playing a preliminary demonstration of Munro Elliott, and let’s say that the world of radish earns its name. The apparent motto of the previous games of Easy to understand, difficult to dominate feels as if it had reached another level thanks in large part to the combination of incredible previous game feeling with the new 2.5D artistic style and general aesthetics.
The premise of Munro Elliott is in itself quite radical, although simple: the players try to find the mystical gods of the skate and reach Nirvana to become the next magician of the Skate, since the current reigning, Chiffon, retires. The story takes place from there, with you assuming the role of a fresh face skate genius that tries to show the skills of him to move from being simply a magician of skate to be a true Skate magician.
This aesthetic is transferred to all NPCs and even to personalization. Playing through the game unlocks so many equipment pieces that players can mix and combine, and there are several ways to dress and build your character. Initially it was so overwhelming that I simply pressed randomly many times until I found something that I liked, but when I did it, I really liked it. And when a particular shirt or board unlocked later, simply playing a level, changed position as it seemed better.
If you have played any of the Olliolli titles before, skating feels relatively similar in Munro Elliott. The tricks are achieved through a relatively painless set of buttons combinations that focuses greatly on the ways in which you really move your character while accelerating through an environment to grind, take some air and, in general, progress. It makes everything feel deceptively simple, but surfing the stages of radish can be, if you allow me the word game, complicated.
There are obstacles, multiple paths thanks to be 2.5D, secondary missions, optional levels, challenges and more to always consider. Any given level can be played in several ways, and I certainly did it exactly there. There were times when I sat down, and I just spent a level because I was giving me problems. There were times when I intentionally tried to get out of the trite path, the Gnarly route, to see what was happening exactly there. And there were even moments when I simply tried to make all my tricks perfectly, which is as difficult as it seems.
In a particularly memorable case, I spent more than half an hour by simply trying to land a single jump. The jump was at a point after a series of jumps not as difficult in Grinds, but I could not hit at the right time. I would completely lose my goal or simply would collide against one side, falling into the water and forcing me to restart my abuse. It probably says something so much about me and about the quality of Munro Lille that as soon as I landed, after having remained awake until late to do it, I immediately went to sleep, and I dreamed of playing more. Now I’m awake, of course, but I’m still dreaming exactly with that.
Munro Olliolli will be launched for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC through Steam on February 8. This preview, specifically, was played on PC using an Xbox controller. You can check all our previous coverage of the next video game here.