OlliOlli World’s first DLC is about aliens because of course it is.

This quirky skater was giving us all the hints with its offbeat dialogue and radical zones, now the VOID Riders have landed and are throwing everything into disarray.

But does that make for a good old fun time back in Radland?

How to Play

Once purchased, ‘Top Secret Classified Alien Area’ will appear on the in-game map in the centre of Burnt Rock. To access it, you’ll need to have reached and completed ‘Route 666’ in ‘Burnt Rock’ which is where you learn Spins.

Once unlocked, small vortexes will appear in each of the zones. Beat 2 of the 3 courses in each zone to unlock a boss character. Beat the boss and The V.O.I.D at the bottom left of the screen will finally unlock.

As you can probably tell from the steps above, getting into this content proper is a bit of a challenge. In fact, if you haven’t beaten all of the zones in OlliOlli World yet, you won’t be able to see its complete form.

That’s incentive enough to wait to dive into the DLC until you’ve beaten the game, but if that’s not enough, these are some of the roughest, most frustrating and challenging courses you’ll have seen yet.

VOID Riders sees aliens take over Radland, with a different leader appearing in each zone. The leaders are hyping up someone called Nebulord and it’s up to you to beat his lackeys in order to gain his attention.

No easy feat, as even the void zones in Sunshine Valley are brutal! You’re going to need to get your timing down to a fine art, perfect your grinds as never before and be prepared to restart. A lot.

And there’s a whole new mechanic factored into this as well, the tractor beam. By sailing into one of the large purple beams, you’ll need to pull up on the right stick in order to lift you sky high and regain your footing on a higher platform or one that was previously out of reach.

VOID Riders loves giving you air time. There’s one or two sections in certain levels that require you to trust where you’re about to land as the platform isn’t even in view. In fact, sometimes the platforms and grind-rails reconstruct themselves in front of you as you’re zooming toward them. It’s genuinely terrifying.

As VOID Riders is a bit all over the place, it does make the content frustrating. It’s quite stop and start, and you’ll probably find yourself dipping into levels all over the zones to see which one suits your skillset.

I also found the timing on some courses a little bit off and that forced me into a painful replay loop which I really struggled with. Ultimately, though, you will want to beat them all and challenge all of the Nebulord’s minions.

When you do beat any 2 of the 3 void levels in a zone, you do have the equivalent of a boss encounter. Though you’re not actually competing with any of the aliens, rather performing favours for them.

For example, one requires you to race a Lagoon Creature to the finishing line and capture them, whereas another has you knocking down all the wallrides in a level, changing lanes to get around it.

Once you’ve done all that, you can finally meet Nebulord and have a chance to skate around his palace. This sets up a really cool, yet blood-boiling finale with the king VOID Rider himself which sees you practice everything you’ve learned in the game to date.

The good thing about VOID Riders is it does make you revisit all of the previous levels in the game and while you don’t need to complete all the story levels and zone challenges to technically beat it, there’s some nice content now naturally peppered into OlliOlli World with a cool mechanic that’s a bit of a gamechanger.

And for the most part, it’s all very entertaining. It’s actually a well produced piece of content, which is a healthy size, and adds further replayability to an already great game. Some of the courses are genuine thrill-rides and give a burst of adrenaline you won’t find in most other titles this year.

Just be prepared for a challenge. If OlliOlli World was already grinding you into the dirt, this isn’t going to go any easier on you.

Verdict

VOID Riders is a good starting DLC for OlliOlli World. It reintroduces you to its mechanics, adds a few new ones to mix it up and ultimately gets you replaying an already great game. Some timing and gameplay frustrations aside, there’s a healthy dose of content here that you’ll thoroughly enjoy.