Competitive gaming is a term that's thrown around a lot these days. With the continued rise of Esports, it seems like now more than ever multiplayer games like to tout the competitive nature of their experiences and Ubisoft's Roller Champions is no different, claiming to be built with competitive gameplay in mind.
I got to sit down with Roller Champions early to experience the 3v3 rollerblading action that the game had to offer in its entirety and what I found was a very unique and interesting experience that somehow both surpassed and fell short of the expectations I had when going in.
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So is Roller Champions a game worth your time? Let's get into it.
Roller Derby Meets Basketball.
Roller Champions sees two teams of three players, battling it out in an arena to try and beat their opponents, a simple sporting scenario. Each team starts on the opposite side of the oval-shaped rink, with the goal being to collect the ball and skate enough laps to unlock the goal to score points.
To win the game, one team must score five points or have more points by the time limit of seven minutes. A three-minute sudden death mode will activate in the case of a draw. Players can also risk going for extra laps to score more points.
On paper, this would suggest that the games would feel pretty short and that would be correct at first but as I played more games I felt like even the shortest matches would outstay their welcome just a little bit due to Roller Champions' repetitive nature.
Somewhat fittingly, the game that requires players to skate around in a circle made me feel like I was doing just that as a player. Despite its layered and interesting rule-set, in practice, it was almost exclusively the same process of doing laps until you win or lose. Games rarely felt any different from each other regardless of the result you achieved.
That's not to say there wasn't anything to enjoy. I think Roller Champions genuinely has its moments of brilliance. The ability to deny your opponents a goal by stealing the ball from them after they unlock the hoop jolts life into the Ubisoft Original, as do the occasions where the game devolves into a brawl of tackles with players scrambling for the ball.
When these moments occurred, Roller Champions was genuinely a lot of fun. I couldn't stop smiling while they were going on because it was the right amount of chaos to drag out my competitive edge and make me determined to win.
The issue with these moments of brilliance is that they're few and far between and once they fade, the mundane nature of Roller Champions' match-ups returns to the forefront. The gameplay is built around speed but can't quite keep up with itself and can't keep the energy that the chaotic moments provide it.
The pacing of the gameplay truly is the biggest sticking point that Roller Champions has. From long periods of nothing happening as you either have or are chasing the ball to any goal momentum being cut short by a replay system that's completely unnecessary and does nothing but break the flow of gameplay and get old fast.
I was also a little disappointed by the number of games where the opponents either did nothing but tackle you or where one player would hog the ball and never pass until they scored five points, winning immediately.
As it stands, having it be so easy for games to slip into these gameplay traps is, quite frankly, concerning for the longevity of Roller Champions as a game for the casual Ubisoft fan which is honestly a shame. There is a good game in there. Aside from a handful of very minor bugs, It's perfectly functional and has moments of greatness but the truth is that Roller Champions is a title where the gameplay feels a little like an afterthought compared to other aspects of the game and I hope a lot of these issues can be fixed in future updates as Ubisoft have been capable of doing in the past with games like Rainbow Six: Siege.
Skating in Style
One of the big aspects of Roller Champions that was preached by Ubisoft was the character customization and how it made sure to bring a sense of diversity to its available options so players can make a player representative of themselves.
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After experiencing the game for myself, I think they did a decent job at adding a sense of diversity in its character creator with its three options of skin tone, face and body shape allowing for a very unique-to-you looking avatar. The problem with it is, that's it.
While this first character creator does a good job at building the basic template for a character, that's all it does. It's missing core features that are standard in character creation. There are no options for hair, facial hair or eye colour, all features that are expected at the bare minimum in a modern character creator. Why? Well, that answer is sadly quite easy. The Roller Pass and in-game store.
Acting as Roller Champions' Battle Pass, the Roller Pass is divided into free and premium versions. To progress up the tiers to get all the items you either need to gain fans through playing games and completing missions or you can buy tiers for Roller Champions' in-game currency.
This is where the character creator's missing depth has gone. Fed to the roller pass to fill up its tiers so people can unlock new cosmetic items, even if they are items that should be available as standard.
The first item on the free Roller Pass is a hairstyle. A white fauxhawk that you can't change the colour of and this sums up a lot of what made Roller Champions so frustrating to me despite how enjoyable it could be.
This game prides itself on its diversity and the ability to make a character that represents yourself but doesn't think to include the most personalisable part of the human body by default. Instead, it takes that customised character and makes it look the same as everyone else by putting it in a default outfit to try and funnel people into buying the Roller Pass or cosmetics.
The knock-on effect of this decision was that when it came time to unlock cosmetics, including those found in the game's loot boxes and the Roller Pass, I just didn't care. Any connection I had to my character had been stripped away as soon as I started the game.
Verdict
Roller Champions is a frustrating game. It's genuinely good but it feels like it's being held back from reaching its full potential. Its fleeting moments of competitive brilliance are drowned out by a gameplay loop that needs more life injected into it and an overbearing need to monetise everything, regardless of whether or not it detracts from the experience.
RealSport Rating: 2.5 Stars (Out of 5)
A code for Roller Champions on PC was provided by Ubisoft