Roller Champions

Genre: Sports (Roller Derby)

Players: 6 Team Competitive (Online)

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND ITS PAID SEASON PASS

Roller Champions, released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a free-to-play online-focused game loosely based on the sport of Roller-Derby. Players compete in 3v3 matches, trying to get the ball through four gates and then score in basketball hoop-like “donut”, with the winner getting five goals before the other team, or having the most goals when a time limit is reached.

Graphically, Roller Champions is in turns impressive and disappointing. The colorful 3D character models and arenas feature a decent amount of size and detail, even having some nice reflection effects in the shiny surfaces. Unfortunately, this comes at a heavy price – there is some absolutely atrocious aliasing, occasional drops, and perhaps worst of all, when the action gets heavy the game will occasionally freeze for a second or so, something that can absolutely mess you up at a critical moment.

These visuals are backed by a modern pop-heavy soundtrack that’s pretty good, and an extremely enthusiastic announcer who is overbearing to the point of being annoying. Still, the game’s sounds do a good job ramping up the excitement in a tight match.

The core gameplay here is pretty good, and it can be thrilling to have a back-and-forth match as players tackle one another to gain possession of the ball and try to bring it around the arena to make a goal. At its best, this game can play like a roller-coaster ride that captures the best elements of a great sports game.

Unfortunately, this game is not always at its best. The important tackle move is difficult to aim at high speeds, and trying to intercept opponents or the ball at high speeds can be absurdly difficult. Simply judging depth perception in this game can make it a challenge to play the game well, and it doesn’t help that the game keeps players who tackle opponents down on the ground about as long as their tackled targets.

I’ll also note that the mechanic to gain speed, which depends on pressing ZR when on a downhill slope, feels over-complicated when you’re trying to dodge the other team, navigate the game’s arenas, and possibly even aim the ball at the target hoop.

Your experience will also vary depending on the sort of team you have, and far too often I found myself paired with other players who kept wanting the ball passed to them (even when they were surrounded by the other team), but who absolutely refused to pass the ball themselves. Perhaps this was just bad luck of the draw, but it became such a significant part of the experience that I feel like the only way to be sure you’re going to enjoy this game is to bring two friends with you so you can be assured you’ll have a team that isn’t just a bunch of selfish ball-hoarders.

The other issue here is variety and progression – the game’s competitive arenas all feature the same, boring oval shape. It would have been nice if the different tracks were more than just reskins of the same location. There’s also not much variety to match types. While the game does advertise having temporary seasonal events, there are none running as of right now, and the game has already been released on other platforms for a month.

As for progression, this ties into the game’s monetization, which has two different kinds of currency, fans and wheels, with the former used to measure progress and eventually get you a miniscule amount of the latter, which is what is needed to purchase cosmetics. As you can probably already tell, this progression happens at a glacial pace, and the game isn’t shy about trying to upsell you on purchasing wheels or a season pass with real-world money.

I started Roller Champions with a glowing opinion of it, but the more I played it, the more that opinion got dragged downward. On the surface, it looks great… until you start to see all the performance issues, even ones that affect the gameplay. The gameplay is fantastic… when it works right, which it often doesn’t. And the multiplayer competition is wonderful… until you inevitably get dumped into a team of players who don’t care about teamwork and only want to keep the ball for themselves, which will happen a lot. And to top it all off, the lack of variety and dreadfully-slow progression makes it feel like even if you’re doing well, you’re not making any real headway. Because of all this, Roller Champions is a game that feels like it has a good formula to be a truly great game, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

tl;dr – Roller Champions is a free-to-play online multiplayer-focused 3v3 Roller Derby game where players need to make a circuit of the arena and toss a ball in a hoop to score before they get tackled by the opposing team. There is some genuinely fun gameplay here, but it’s marred by some frustrating gameplay issues, some nasty performance issues, a lack of variety, glacial progression, and the simple reality that unless you get together your own team, you’ll frequently be paired with players who have no concept of “teamwork”. It’s still worth a look if you’re curious to try a unique and fast-paced Sports game, but its frustrations make it a much worse game than it could have been.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best New Free-To-Play Game

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