After a 2 year delay, Ubisoft’s free Roller Champions is very nice
After several delays, the free roller derby game from Ubisoft Roller heroes Right now, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a 100% video game that you can play if you want to.
Roller Champions pit two teams of three against each other in a race to score five points on a supercharged derby circuit. The rules are simple: get the ball, carry it one lap around the track (in either direction), then put it in a hoop to score a point. Make three laps before a dive – which increases the risk of the opposing team pulling the ball away – and you get three points; Do five spins, you will give five points, automatic win. This is it!
Unfortunately, the gameplay is as simple as the simple rules. This is somewhat inevitable – arenas are small and matches last seven minutes max – but even with those relatively tight limits in mind, there’s not much to do. Organized and coordinated teams may find it fun to learn to pass, pump and score effectively as a unit, but Roller Champion’s limits are so limited that pickup matches are boring.
It’s not very interesting the way team sports are sometimes when all parties involved in whatever is being played suck, because there’s always that One person Who takes it seriously and knows what they are doing, and which team they are in control. Yes, that’s a broad generality, but it’s my experience: The team with the neat guy is the team that will win.
I think the biggest problem with Roller Champions is that it’s not violent enough. You can lift your elbows up or make a flying motion to check on the other guys, but nothing else, and they’ll bounce back almost instantly. You can’t, for example, grab someone from behind and shove them into the woods, drop them for counting a sinister clothesline, or run them to the rails and carry them there while your teammates beat shit from them. I’m not saying Roller Champions would be any better as a battle royale on wheels, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t not Say that too.
It’s strange to me that Roller Champions has been delayed not just once, but twice (Opens in a new tab)because the gameplay I tried looks almost identical to what was shown in the E3 trailer from 2019 (Opens in a new tab). I realize that developing a game is complex and difficult, especially in the midst of a pandemic, but it’s been almost three years and from an unofficial perspective the game doesn’t seem to have changed significantly at all.
It’s also a little wonky. Roller Champions looks more stable today than it did yesterday, when it was launched: My first six attempts to play resulted in one match and five crashes. Ubisoft later said there were connectivity issues caused by an unexpected surge in players, and I’ve played multiple matches with only one downtime today. That’s better but still not great, of course, and some guys still do it Issues. Wait times can also be murky: Quick Play matches are pretty strong now, but it took me four tries, waiting over two minutes at a time, before I could get into a ranked match.
Ultimately, Roller Champions is a safe, generic way to deal with numbers completely Family friendly (Opens in a new tab) Roller derby that shows flashes of fun sometimes. You can’t go wrong with the price – it’s free, remember – but I don’t think I’ll hold my breath waiting for it to become the next Rocket League too. You can check it out for yourself at ubisoft.com (Opens in a new tab).