Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’
Almost out of nowhere, Roller Champions has been released on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms and is a game that I feel like I’ve heard more about through various discussions on podcasts from the past year and change than any sort of marketing. The Roller derby genre is an empty one, devoid of pretty much any competition, but as a multiplayer game, especially one that is free to play, well that is one very crowded arena.
Roller Champions certainly does have its moments, giving off almost the same kind of vibe as Rocket League or something more recent like Knockout City, another ball-centric game that saw initial highs and was the talk of the town for several weeks. However; at launch, Roller Champions is a very bare-bones experience that is highlighted by having initially limited course options and extremely basic skater customization, apart from its catalog of paid items and those earned through its paid premium “Roller Pass”. While there is certainly a future here due to a solid foundation in its game mechanics, a bit more variety out of the gate, such as clan support, would have done this game wonders.
The 3v3 gauntlet you’ll undertake with your team follows rather simple rules detailed out in a pretty well-put-together tutorial, even if the announcer’s voice felt way too overexaggerated. During seven-minute rounds, with the first team to score five goals, you’ll skate counter-clockwise around the rink, passing through consecutive checkpoint gates. As you clear four sequential gates, you’ll open up the scoring ring, giving you the chance to earn points. Be interrupted during your checkpoints and lose the ball to the other team and your streak is broken and you’ll have to try again. However, if you pass through 8 gates, thus ignoring the goal and going for another lap, you’ll earn three points, with a final lap scoring five points and winning the game.
While the aim of Roller Champions is very easy to pick up and play, games built around competition ofter falter if you don’t have a good team put together, or even just a vocal one as it can be rather easy to get frustrated when you get paired with a group that just doesn’t play well together. This sort of dynamic can make or break your overall experience with any multiplayer competition. If no one is racing in unison, passing back and forth, tackling any followers, or clearing the way for the ball-runner, it’s hard to build up enough momentum or confidence to secure victory. In any of the matchmade games I’ve played, not a single teammate spoke. Through the Xbox’s built-in LFG system, I eventually found a few teammates who were consistently vocal, and it was then where I started winning. While crossplay is enabled through matchmaking, it is surprisingly not available to create a party from those playing on another platform, at least in what I have seen. If there is a way to do this, it’s not easily discoverable.
Passing, shooting, and tackling are the core components of Roller Champions and work rather well provided you have a team that is working together. If you don’t have the ball, you can press Y to request it, and, if you are within range, the ball will magnetically be passed to you if your teammate can reliably throw it, complete with an icon that waves overtop of you to indicate an incoming pass.. Be too far away and the ball may bounce out of your reach, waiting for the next set of grabby hands to connect with it. Shooting is pretty straightforward with ensuring you give it enough heft and aim for the goal while paying attention to your immediate surroundings as it can be all too easy to line up that shot and get slammed into the ground before your fingers even leave the ball.
Roller Champions runs its mechanics through a few categories; general, ground, air, team moves, and extra. General is fleshed out with basic commands like using pump, which is lowering your body mass to speed up when going down slopes to gain momentum, or using it to land faster after a pretty high jump. You can also uppercut as an offensive move or use it to intercept a last-second goal attempt. Throws can be charged to have a bit more impact, especially if you are throwing it much farther away. You also need to either use draft to increase your speed behind your teammates or watch out if your opponent is drafting behind you, making them creep that much closer.
On the ground, you can tackle, or dive, either offensively, or as a defensive maneuver when you have the ball. You can spin the camera around to time your dodge against your opponent, getting the better of them and giving you a clear run for the goal. You can also brake sharply to change your momentum, causing that unwanted tail to fly right by as you pass the ball to your teammate, creating that amazing play that could end the game. In the air, you can perform the same overall tackles or dodges that you can perform on the ground but with a bit more of an ariel flair to them, just don’t miss or you’ll be eating pavement.
Team moves are where a lot of communication comes into play as you can use them to grapple and slingshot yourself forward, and this becomes crucial as you grapple onto your teammate who has the ball and slingshot forwards a great distance to retrieve the ball via a killer pass. You can also gain some extreme air as you grapple and then jump, all while using LB to leave the grapple either straight ahead of them or combing it with A to catapult yourself into the air. Extra’s add a bit of flair to your performance, such as rolling the ball ahead of you to prevent a quick interception or simply as a means to lock onto the ball to make its acquisition that much easier. You also have a host of emotes you can unlock, which are perfectly usable when you score to sell off that breathtaking goal. Each goal does have an instant replay, but they really lack that excitement and presentation and are often just ariel shots of the play in action.
When you have a grasp on everything this game has and have a team that is working together, Roller Champions has a foundation for being a very fast-paced and intense experience. Weaving in and out of incoming lunges, scaling the sides of the rink to speed around the corner, and charging up that shot for that rare five-pointer is incredibly enjoyable. I do wish the game had some sort of constant commentating to give it that added excitement as well as being an audible indicator of skirmishes at the other end of the ring. There is some commentating that plays during interceptions, but maybe having nicknames selectable for your roller could have moments such as “and here comes the Rocket Avenger hoping to get that five-point shot! and she does it!! Five Points to Orange, and that’s the game!!” and really sell that this is, in fact, a sport.
Being a sport, you’ll want to keep your fandom entertained, and as you win, you’ll earn fans. The more fans you have, you’ll need a new arena that can contain them. This is both an interesting mechanic and one that sort of backfires. The initial course is the Acapulco arena which is built to hold 20,000 fans. In order to even play the other arenas, such as Mexico, or Chichen Itza which holds 50,000 and 100,000 fans, respectively, you either need to earn the appropriate number of fans to unlock them for matchmaking or play in a custom game, which doesn’t offer rewards. I love the fan mechanic as it gives you something to grow towards, but having to play the same course some 50 times before you see another one, just to grind that one for another 50 or so matches can feel exhausting and drastically limiting. While each win will only reward a set number of fans, usually around 150-250, there are challenges that do reward 1000 fans, but these only rotate out every few days. If each arena had a day and night variation, it could help, but arena diversity is desperately needed here, especially since the last two rinks are far and away better than what we have with Acapulco.
I mentioned it before, but Roller Champions is free-to-play and while I do believe that will give it easy access to the community it needs to thrive, it will also come down to how enticing the Roller Pass rewards are and the added customization to kit out your roller. Personally, I do like a lot of the outfits, gloves, and skates, as they really add a lot of personality to your roller. One outfit that I have almost makes me look as if the White Power Ranger joined a Roller derby league and I am totally there for it. However, the profile banners and cosmetic items for tricking out your Gamertag are less impressive rewards to earn and feel like they could have been included as you earn a new set of gloves or some flashy new skates when you check out that new lootball you’ve earned, the game’s version of a loot box.
To speed through the process of earning cosmetics, or to purchase the premium Roller Pass, you can buy “Wheels” that act as the game’s currency. I’ll point out that you cannot purchase lootballs with wheels and can only earn them via the Roller Pass or by completing challenges. As for the rotating store, I do hope to see some discounts applied to the value of certain skins as nearly $20 for a full outfit can feel a tad unnecessary especially as this sort of game is built around incentivizing you to change up your look rather often as you earn more and more fans.
Roller Champions also features a skatepark to practice your moves, run strats with other players as you can occupy this space with 5 other skaters. This mode also hides a feature I would love to see become its own mode; a good ol’ fashion game of keep-a-way. The last player to hold onto the ball earns a Lootball and some bonus fans, at least it did in my time with the game, so it’s possible you could earn other different rewards. I feel this type of thing should be its own mode and considering this whole park is a unique stage of its own, it could get some use out of it other than just working on your throw or figuring out how braking can improve your game.
Roller Champions does just a little a bit more than the bare minimum to make its sport feel like a spectacle. It’s flashy and colorful, and the outfits and character designs feel great for the sport, but lack an overall style that makes it feel unique. When I look at Knockout City, those designs pop, even if I find them often haunting and disturbing. The presentation here is still solid with easy-to-read menus and the visual language present in the game is more than serviceable. The arenas themselves are really engaging in their design, but apart from aesthetics, each of the three at launch are identical in their form and factor, which is a slight disappointment. You also have a collection of licensed music, but it oddly only exists in the lobby, which feels like a waste of some truly enjoyable tunes.
Apart from a few disconnects and the game hanging on the loading screen two or three times, Roller Champions has been very easy to get into a match and play, even if voiceless randoms haven’t exactly been the key to success. I think there is a very solid foundation here for the future, but its launch state just feels too barren for how long this game has been in development. With more customization, clan support, and mode and arena variety, I can see Roller Champions being a success, but like so many free-to-play games, it almost feels like each of them has an invisible expiry date, counting down their relevancy.
Developer - Ubisoft Montreal. Publisher - Ubisoft. Released -May 25th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows. Rated - (E 10+) Mild Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code/currency was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.