OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood (PSV) - Review

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“When you've done something right, people won't know you've done anything at all.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about this quote whilst playing OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood, the latest twitch platformer from developer Roll7. It’s a brand new game, but on the surface it plays and looks no different to its predecessor, leading some fans to wonder why it’s a sequel at all.

OlliOlli 2 is an evolution of the series, rather than a revolution, and whilst it may not have as big of an impact as the original, it still introduces some excellent changes, bringing with it numerous little tweaks and improvements. I genuinely can’t now bring myself to go back to the original. 

So, where have the changes been made? Certainly not the progression system, where OlliOlli 2 follows in the steps of its predecessor, giving you five different areas with five levels each to conquer. These five stages also each have five optional objectives to complete, and should you complete all of them, you’ll unlock the “pro” version of that level. The pro levels are where the men are separated from the mice, with the scores needing to be achieved being well in the millions - a far cry from the challenges of the amateur levels you begin with.

Each area is unique and fun, with area names having a nice twist on other popular games in the industry. Take, for example, the carnival of the dead stages, which are based on the Left 4 Dead series and therefore feature zombies and the like. But as much as each area changes in style, they all remain consistent in terms of game mechanics.

The game differentiates grind rails from the floor with bold, unique colours that ensure you know the difference whilst travelling at high speeds. Still, some levels require muscle memory, rather than working off what you can see in real time, which can be annoying at first but which pushes you to learn every nook and cranny of a stage from start to finish, enabling you to take advantage of every rail, slope, and floor to maximise your point potential.

It’s in the gameplay itself that you’ll see the biggest changes in OlliOlli 2, with manuals and reverts taking centre stage in making for a reinvigorated skating experience whilst traversing levels. Stringing together massively long combos like never before is insanely gratifying, and easily one of the primary reasons I can’t now return to the original. You're now more reliant on normal ground for making up points, but this will sometimes be to your detriment as you'll forget to maintain sufficient momentum in your hunt for points. 

The gameplay also changes in the way the stages are set up, with new inclines on hills making it far more challenging and rewarding to time your landings to perfection. Inclines also have new launchers at the bottom which, should you miss, cause massive headaches in the way stages are set up.

All of these new mechanics make for levels that are just as infuriating as ever, which is fantastic. I’m somewhat surprised the triangle button is still working on my Vita after the amount of times I mashed it to restart stages. In a way it’s reminiscent of games like Super Meat Boy or Trails, where each failure is entirely your own and the twitch gameplay is so intoxicating that you keep coming back for just one more attempt.

OlliOlli 2 isn’t only comprised of normal stages however. Skate spots are unlocked after each stage completion. These spots are short, and nowhere near the length of normal stages, but they allow you to compete on the world leaderboard to see who can get the most points in a short, confined area. There’s also daily grind, a mode which allows you a single attempt at one of these spots (again, competing for a place on the world leaderboard). As the name implies, the daily grind changes daily, and the challenge comes from the fact that you can only attempt the stage once properly; if you bail, you fail. 

I went back to the original OlliOlli after playing OlliOlli 2 for a while, so I could get a feel for the importance of the changes that had been made (initially I was sceptical that much had really changed, but I was wrong, massively wrong). The stage layouts may not have changed much, but every single game mechanic has been polished, ensuring OlliOlli 2 is far more reactive to your inputs than the original. 

The soundtrack was a large part of why I loved the original; I even listen to it from time to time on a YouTube playlist whilst programming or writing. OlliOllli2's soundtrack is decent, but it hasn’t stuck with me the same way OlliOlli’s did, and most of tracks are actually fairly mediocre in comparison.

OlliOlli 2 is the sum of all of its changes. Whilst it feels, looks, and behaves much like the original, OlliOlli 2 includes so many subtle improvements that you'll be hard-pressed to ever go back to the original. Could OlliOlli 2 have been an expansion to the original? Maybe, but I can’t help but think the sweeping changes Roll7 made to the core mechanics would have been impossible to implement in OlliOlli without overhauling the entire game anyway.

Should you buy OlliOlli 2? If you enjoyed OlliOlli, definitely; you won't find a better brand new twitch platformer on any device anytime soon. However, if you found the original repetitive and too difficult to get into the first time around then the sequel will do nothing to change your opinion of the franchise in the slightest.

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