OlliOlli World

OlliOlli World took Roll7's skateboarding series in a new direction — from top-score arcade runs into a full 2.5D platformer with a colourful, character-filled world wrapped around it — and the gamble paid off almost unanimously at launch. "This truly is a video game made with love," reads one of the game's earliest reviews. "I adore everything about this game from the art style, the characters, the music, the gameplay." That reception has held up remarkably well: 88.4% positive across 1,188 English reviews, Very Positive, more than four years on.

A platformer with real skill and real style

The core loop rewards exactly the kind of mastery this genre lives on — chaining tricks and grinds through increasingly demanding levels, with a scoring and combo system that reviewers describe as accessible on a casual pass and genuinely deep for players chasing perfect runs. "This is a really fun platformer that offers a good challenge and replayability," reads one review. "The game can be as chill or difficult as you would like to make it." The art direction and soundtrack draw the most consistent praise of all — vividly stylised zones each with their own musical identity, singled out by nearly every review regardless of overall verdict. The trick-input scheme itself — rotating a stick and releasing rather than pressing discrete buttons — splits opinion: most reviewers find it elegant once learned, but 19 of the 100 most-helpful negatives specifically call it uncomfortable or imprecise, and several describe the late-game challenge levels as punishing enough to undercut the earlier levels' friendlier pacing.

A separate, documented controversy

Reading this game's more recent reviews requires understanding something that has nothing to do with skateboarding. On 28 March 2025, Take-Two Interactive and 2K — OlliOlli World's publisher — rolled out an overhauled Terms of Service across their catalogue, independently reported by GamesRadar+ and others: expanded data collection covering names, IP addresses, hardware configuration and more; anti-cheat software reviewers say carries elevated system access; and restrictions on modding, even in single-player games. That triggered genuine, documented review-bombing across multiple 2K-published titles, including the Borderlands series specifically named in press coverage. This isn't a claim resting on Steam reviews alone — it's corroborated by independent reporting of an actual, dated policy change.

The pattern shows up clearly in this game's own review sample: 15 of the 100 most-helpful English negatives raise spyware, telemetry or privacy concerns, and while some predate the March 2025 change — "I feel like I just signed away my first born child," reads one review from launch week in 2022, about an unusually long EULA even then — the volume and intensity increase sharply after it. "Latest update installs 2K spyware in an already broken singleplayer game," reads one from June

2025. Layered on top of that is a related, structural complaint: the game requires an always-online

connection even for entirely solo play, and multiple reviewers report server downtime interrupting runs and breaking combos in a game with no online multiplayer to justify the requirement in the first place.

What the completion data shows

The achievement curve confirms the front-loaded difficulty reviewers describe: the two easiest milestones sit above 90%, then drop sharply to the 40-46% range for the next tier, consistent with a game whose early levels land well broadly and whose later challenges lose a real share of the audience.

7 out of 10. OlliOlli World is a genuinely excellent, beautifully realised platformer on its own terms — Roll7 nailed the reinvention, and the game's Very Positive score reflects real craft rather than hype. But it now carries, fairly or not, part of a documented and much larger controversy about its publisher's data practices, and an always-online requirement that has no clear justification for single-player content. Judge the game and the publisher as the two separate questions they actually are, and check 2K's current terms yourself before deciding where you land.