Roller Champions (2022)

I went into Roller Champions with minimal expectations. Ubisoft appears to be desperate to imbed themselves with a successful live service game alongside EA, Epic Games and Activision. They have already tried and failed miserably with Hyperscape. Recently Ubi has also shown some concepts for future free to play projects that suffered hugely negative feedback from the gaming community. With those factors in mind, I do believe that this game has some strong legs if it can filter through fresh ideas, playlists and interesting, affordable cosmetics.

Roller Champions has potential; the core gimmick and gameplay are both lots of fun and it's satisfying blasting your enemy across the court with a dropkick as they're about to score three points against you. However, it lacks in pretty much every other department and there's just not enough content in here to satisfy anyone. Add in the performance and blurry visual issues on Switch, and we can't really recommend the game on Nintendo's console in its current state. It is free-to-play, so it's worth a try if anything we've mentioned sounds interesting, but unless some serious updates are made to this version, you're definitely best off playing it on a different platform if at all possible.

As it stands, Roller Champions doesn't offer much. It certainly has a good foundation with its resolutely arcade gameplay, ultra accessible, simple game rules, but that's it. Content level, we have nothing to put under the tooth.

There's something satisfying about its derby-style structure and the nuanced tactics that entails. Its rollerblading mechanics are very approachable, yet there's also a deceptive skill ceiling too. But, like skating through a small sand mound, the momentum is lost by the repetition and under-polished features.

Roller Champions does not have the stuff of champions and, net of a gameplay that works and entertains, fails to live up to expectations due to serious shortcomings in terms of content and on the technical / artistic side, due to which the game fails to live up to other successful free to play.