If this doesn't make a good dozen GOTY lists this year I'll be astonished. In a world that feels like it's getting irrevocably darker, OlliOlli World is like an ELI NP laser piercing through the fog with a beam of pure positivity.

Sports games? Pah! Score attack stuff? Hmm. OlliOlli World really has disabused me of any notion that I can judge anything so readily off of its genre. OlliOlli World shows execution is everything.

I've officially met my match in the gold league and I'm ready to sit back and gawk at this thing. Top to bottom, from its pastel visuals, leave-the-game-on-in-the-background-good soundtrack, and pitch-perfect accessible but hard to master gameplay, this thing is annoyingly hard to critique in any way other than gushing appreciation.

Does that make for an interesting review? We'll have to just reckon with the reality. This thing is too good for me to write a fun takedown or balanced take.

So let's keep it short and sweet. Like the game itself (if you really shot through it).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2773844769

The first thing to say is wow - what an injection of personality! And what a difference it makes. Leave my words for a trice and take a quick gander at OlliOlli 1 and 2. Back? Yeah, they were fine. OlliOlli 2 is quite aesthetically pleasing, but it's a largely faceless affair. The environments were the characters, essentially. OlliOlli World retains the interesting environments whilst making them doubly appealing for the 2.5D expansion, but also adds character customisation and a 3D colourful cast of characters whose pastel colours, design and colours all appeal in the extreme. If you'd rather skip their pre/post level dialogue, that's an option, but I never found the cast grating. Backgrounds benefit from the new dimension with busy, populated and quirky settings full of bizarre seagullmen, wildlife, and crowds of all kinds doing their thing. The customisation presentation is so charming and even includes animations for tricks, that it's more or less the only customisation page I've ever cared about in a game. For sheer added style and personality, this is a homerun.

Second, it runs with everything the Olli Olli games got right, but in an even more interesting way. Unless you're sprinting to the finish, levels are multidimensional and almost Tony Hawk-esque within 2D confines. At a minimum you get to the end of the level. If more ambitious, you finish without triggering a checkpoint or hit a high score by keeping your combo intact and performing more risky and varied stunts. But where they really demand multiple plays and explorations is in the Tony Hawk reminiscent 'Mike's Challenges.' These require taking different paths, avoiding or hitting various things, performing certain feats, etc. They're creative, but they also add this explorative aspect to levels. This is a 2D game, but the ability to change path means these levels expand into near labyrinthian size. Each can be almost intimidatingly big, with interconnecting paths creating these handcrafted worlds of intrigue and technical opportunity. I LOVE it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2773844738

And for all the level complexity, there's no shortage of them. These map areas nicely slope up in challenge in a way that lets you realise gradual mastery in each element of your play. The beautiful simple single stick-based approach to jumping and grinding gives way to the complexities of spinning, tweaking, landing, etc. The moment I thought I had a handle on the game's demands, it added a new stick, trigger or button. In the end, it's all still beautifully simple to control, but you've travelled far from the initial simplicity of the single stick starting point and have to juggle a dozen considerations to maximize your score.

Even with the many handcrafted levels behind you, additional challenges are opened up, procedurally generated levels are unlocked, and so too are the leagues wherein you compete online on common levels made available. The leagues in particular are just the perfect cap to the experience. Putting everything you've learnt to the test to get your score into a qualifying place on the leaderboard is so satisfying. Having these smaller, local leaderboards for ten or so people rather than the typical global leaderboards makes these single-day competitions all the more possible for players of average ability like me. Revisiting daily to get promoted to the gold leagues and beyond is the perfect excuse to keep coming back.

If I have ANY criticism, it is only that being score-competitive makes an enemy of your fingers, thumbs, and patience. The kind of constant on the spot, risky tweaking of your jumps you have to do to drive your combo up to get to a league-worthy score makes me wish there wasn't a more headache proof and thumb-friendly means of doing so. Maybe it's just the kind of player I am, but after trying to compete in the gold league all I want to do is have a more laid back exploration of the levels without constant optimisation of every moment and stretch of a stage. High scores are killer, then, but I suppose what's the alternative? A grind is a grind.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2773844801

What more can I really say? I usually hate to have more than one or several games installed at a time, but OlliOlli World's place on my drive is now a requisite in my life like breathing. What if I couldn't have the soundtrack on rotation whilst I work? What if I couldn't give the daily league an attempt? OlliOlli World promises the world in its title and delivers.

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