Everybody has to have their own, right? Once a breakout game becomes a huge sensation, everyone scrambles to have their own version. PUBG did it for Battle Royales and Overwatch for Hero Shooters; these are a dime a dozen now, with series like Call of Duty and Resident Evil having their own takes of varying quality (or sometimes, multiple takes in CoD’s case). One of these breakout hits was Rocket League, and while not an exact analogue for Rocket League, Roller Champions is Ubisoft’s attempt to scratch that over-the-top sports game itch. Launching in May on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, Ubisoft’s free-to-play skater, Roller Champions has rolled onto the Switch out of nowhere, with a surprise launch on a Tuesday. A pleasant surprise, we hoped, but sadly it’s not looking good.

Roller Champions is a 3v3 team-based sport ‘em up. Half-roller derby, half-basketball, the basic gist is that teams must gain and stay in possession of the ball, do laps around the arena and score five points by throwing the ball through a ring. Once the opposing team gains possession of the ball, your lap progress is reset and it’s back to square one. One lap equals one point, two laps equal three points, and three laps equal five, the achievement of which ends the match instantly. We really like this lap system; it offers a great risk vs reward formula in which you could play it safe by doing one lap and guaranteeing a point, or risk losing all of your progress to go big.

As the name implies, the whole game takes place on rollerskates and the movement feels great. There’s a good sense of momentum as you skate around the arena, especially once you get the hang of drafting and the ‘pump’ mechanic in which your character crouches to gain speed while going down sloped areas. Accompanying the basic movement are the core combat mechanics in which you can tackle, dodge, dive, dropkick, and even uppercut opponents in order to gain possession.

Matches take place on one of the currently four arenas, and which arena that is depends on how many ‘fans’ (the game's version of XP) you and the other players have accrued. Arenas take in places like the seaside resort of Acapulco or the dingy streets of Brooklyn. The catch, however, is the arena only dictates the background elements of the stage, and makes no impact on the playable area, which remains one huge oval no matter where you end up. This isn't necessarily an issue — Rocket League only had one map to start out with. However, it would have been nice to see the developers integrate some varied arena shapes, or even adding elements like ramps or environment-specific hazards to give these maps some variety, even if they limited this to non-ranked modes.

There are four main game modes. Quick match, Ranked match, Skatepark, and Surprise Events. Quick match, surprise surprise, is your bog-standard match, and Ranked will be similarly familiar if you’ve played any video game ever with a ranking system. You play ten placement matches to determine your starting rank from one of seven, from ‘garage’ to ‘elite champions’. Skatepark is an online free-roam session in which you and five other players can hang around and practice your skating… and not much else. Finally, Surprise Events run every weekend, with past events having ranged from being as simple as a 2v2 mode on a slightly smaller arena to 'Hot Potato' in which the ball has a fuse and if it is not passed before it runs out it will explode before becoming free for an opponent to take.

The game is entirely free-to-play (without the need for Nintendo Switch Online, just as with every other free-to-play game on the system) and has cross-platform connectivity with cross-play and cross-progression included via a Ubisoft account. However, you’re unable to add players to a party from other platforms; this may potentially be patched in at a later date but as things stand at launch it’s worth noting as you won't be able to play with your friends on Xbox and PlayStation.

We found online play to be a bit of a mixed bag. Some matches can go smoothly while others can be jittery messes, and obviously your own connection will be a factor here. At the very least, Quick matches are reasonably (and appropriately) quick to get into. Ranked match queue times are generally a bit longer but not excessively so.

Like most free-to-play games, the microtransaction focus is on cosmetics. You start the game by creating a butt-ugly character with the incredibly limited character creator, and you can earn gear to deck them out with. Gear is doled out through Lootballs (Roller Champions’ loot box mechanic), the ‘Roller Pass’, or through a premium currency called Wheels. However, it’s hard to understand why anyone would care about the cosmetics in the game when the characters are so bland and downright ugly. Ubisoft’s take on the Fortnite aesthetic has gone wrong somewhere down the line, you can't escape the characters' dead soulless eyes as they peer into the deepest reaches of your psyche.

The rest of the game isn't so ugly on other platforms, although that can't be said for the Switch version. The game has performance and quality modes specifically made for docked and handheld mode, respectively. In handheld mode, the game is a bit of a blurry, headache-inducing mess, blighted by that smeared-with-vaseline look that's difficult to ignore. At the very least, it runs relatively smoothly in both quality and performance modes when played away from the TV.

Plugging the console into the dock does make things look better — as one might hope — however, we found that the game suffered from constant frame rate drops in both visual modes on the TV, really struggling to cope when more than three players are on the screen. We really would not recommend playing in TV mode until this is addressed, which unfortunately means vaseline mode is the only viable option.

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.

I would have gone with "Rocket Beleaguered."

You forgot to put in the joys that it’s not P2W. (Seriously the only thing I saw that you could get was cosmetics)

The human character models faces look horrifying in this title

also worth noting that crossplay is off by default some people will like that cause most games have it on by default

We just see the same words time and time again now - poor performance on Switch. Looks terrible on Switch.

And it’s going to keep getting worse. Time to upgrade Nintendo

Shouldn't it be "An Ubisoft original"?

At this point, I think the A Ubisoft Original banner is just a warning sign.

@LillianC14 I thought about this too. I guess this proves that Ubisoft, the company, pronounces its name as “YOO-be-soft”, thus making “A YOO-be-soft Game” grammatically correct.

I tried this game and yes it was ugly but was more fun than I expected. The “battle” mechanics were not well implemented I felt. But the core sports action is fun. If you like Rocket League, give it a shot.

@LillianC14 You would say A Ubisoft Original in the same fashion that you'd say A Universe of wonders!

Of all the games to feature large bosom ladies, they are oddly missing from this. That's like the trademark of this uhh sport.

@jarvismp Ahh yes because they did a shoddy rushed port of this crap just to get it out on everything, Nintendo better release a whole new console huh? Logic, where art thou?

@jarvismp think in the instance of this game, it’s poor optimisation.

It’s not a looker in general, and considering the Switch has had some fantastic ports of triple A games that had no right to run or look as good as they did on the Switch, think this is Ubisoft not putting the work in on the Switch version.

It’s no more impressive graphically than other F2P games, and they all run and look fine on the Switch.

Oh look, another boring uninspired ”quirky” free to play game which will die in like 3 months

Not very pretty, but actually quite fun to play

So basically, it's a completly rushed port by Ubisoft to give Switch owners more of their genric F2P games.....Joy

@jarvismp Not the fault of the Switch at all...Ubisoft must have rushed this game in hopes to increse it's popularity. It all comes down to good optimaization by the devs!

To be honest I'm having some good fun with this game, especially for some quick 15 min fun when you don't feel like firing up a big game

I wish more of the above points in the review were given to a lot more 3rd party games on Switch that are accessible on other consoles. Because games like Fortnite or Rocket League look exceptionally better on XSX or PS5, even Xbone and PS4. The recent DOOM games, Witcher 3, Crysis and a lot more games look absolutely terrible on Switch when you actually compare it with other consoles, let's be honest with ourselves like this review is. I'm all for having more games on Switch as I own close to 150, but definitely we need to be subtracting a few points from a lot of games because the performance/ graphics are just not all there for most ports. Nintendo's 1st party games all look absolutely stellar though and a lot of beautiful games absolutely exist on the Switch and deserve all the praise they receive.

As a big fan of Rocket League, I was curious about this. However after playing it for 5 minutes I already know I will never play it again. Hated everything about it. I'm no fan of Ubisoft games in general but I'd have expected a little more than this sorry effort from them.

@Kilamanjaro So just because this generic Ubisoft game looks bad because Ubisoft rushed it EVERY third party game on Switch is automaticly bad....even Fortnite, Witcher 3 and Crysis which look pretty good?

Well I will give it a go and see for myself.

@Ryu_Niiyama Just take my word (and the reviewer's word) that this rushed Ubisoft garbage it's not worth you time.....

So it's a typical modern Ubisoft micro-transaction cash grab!

With those cons it’s got Ubisoft written all over it!

I'm a Rocket League addict so I gave this a try. Man oh man what a waste of time. An hour or so of mine; thousands of man-days of Ubisoft's. The game is too complicated to control and the camera is terrible - where's the ball? Which way am I going? The whole thing is just a mad scramble. The menu UI is just all over the place. There's unskippable cutscenes all the time so you can't get into the groove of "one more game" - it will take you a minimum of 5 minutes between ending one match and actually starting the next one. And it even fails at F2P, which honestly should be a known formula by now. You need to give people a taste of the good life before you start withholding the really cool stuff behind a paywall. But this game is just unbelievably stingy. When you start playing, you have literally no cosmetics. No clothing options, not even hair. They give you one loot box and then you're on your own. Most of my 3x3 matches involved 6 bald clones, all wearing the same default t-shirt. And then no more rewards for at least 5 more matches. Ubisoft haven't even let me start playing dress-up, how am I supposed to get hooked? I wanted to get into this game; I like the roller derby idea. But the gameplay is painful, the presentation is annoying, and the customisation hook is a non-starter. It fought me every inch of the way so I've put it down for good and had another weekend of Rocket League.

Oh ya, this game. From 20 years ago.

@jarvismp True , but remember that Switch is a handheld !!!

@premko1 Home console hybrid but ok

So outside switch port wise, it’s actually a ok game?

@TheMelodiusRose I can plug my psp into my TV doesn't mean it's a home console lol

@Would_you_kindly You are comparing a handheld with a home console with completly different specs..... Fail.

@TheMelodiusRose it was specifically made to be portable & uses a mobile processor .. it's a handheld

@Would_you_kindly Lmao are you trolling me? It's advertised and played as both a home console and a handheld so....yeah. Also, this "mobile" chip has suprased both the 360 and the PS3 in terms of power

@TheMelodiusRose you mean those consoles that launched in 2005/2006 lol & modern phones chips are much better than the switches if it was an actual home console then it would get all the 3rd party games that Xbox & playstation get

@Would_you_kindly IT IS an actual home console, just not as powerful as those systems. Explain to me tho how is the Switch getting third party games from those systems and still look great? Could a mobile chip handle these games as good as a dedicated hybrid home console like the Switch could? ....i didn't think so.

@TheMelodiusRose The " hybrid " is , IMHO , just the pr slogan . Switch is just handheld with the ability for using hdmi to connect to the tv ( just as my Shield K1 does ) !!!

@TheMelodiusRose IT IS HANDHELD BECAUSE YOU CAN HOLD IT IN YOUR HANDS , NO WIRES REQUIRED AND IT HAS ITS OWN SCREEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!

@TheMelodiusRose my phone can run genshin impact it looks great so yeah it could 🤷‍♂️

@Would_you_kindly Genshin Impact can run on anything just like Fortinite so extremly bad example.

@TheMelodiusRose it can run on anything but isn't on switch ?

Since it's free, I'm going to try it out. Can't be that bad, right?

@Would_you_kindly Oh yeah....blame the Switch again why don't you? It's not like the game is still under development or anything. Yes, we still got nothing on the game after 4 years but i gurantee that it will be much better on Switch than the phone because Switch is an actual home console like it or not!

@premko1 .....So what you are saying is that the main gimmic of the Switch being a dedicated ome console and a handheld together was a lie? If that's the case that's ****** stupid!

@Andy77mk I get that optimisation by devs is an issue but I feel that more devs are just getting lazy now with Switch as they feel it’s too much hassle to make a decent job of things.

It is " soft " lie and it is 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀 stupid . Here we have very nice weather , almost too hot outside . And how is the situation where You are now ?

@TheMelodiusRose The switch uses a mobile SoC, iirc the games are running off the handheld device itself with the dock basically being a cable management tool, so the games themselves are running off a mobile chipset.

The "hybrid" label isn't exactly a lie just a very good way to market the idea of a handheld with TV out, along with including all the stuff needed to run it on a TV in the box rather than being sold as a separate peripheral

@jarvismp if those devs want to reach a bigger audience, they should put the work in to port their games over.

The Switch is by far the biggest console of the three out now (Switch / PS5 / Series X+S), so it’s in developers best interests to do a decent port job.

Heck - some of them outsource the port work to external devs. I get that there is going to be a growing disparity in system limitations going forward, but there really aren’t THAT many great multi console games out at present..

We’ll see a Switch successor when Nintendo are ready to unveil it..

@premko1 what part of the U.K. are you in? It’s 19 degrees in the south, nowhere near as hot as it was a few days back last week..

@Andy77mk north of Poland - its 33 celcius and sunny

@Mgalens I don't like repeating myself but..... Switch IS a home console and handheld is an alternative mode of playing. Also (again) this "mobile" chip has managed to surprass all the 7th gen consoles and every game ported from there looks and runs even better than it ever did before. Heck, even games from the previous gen run and look great on Switch. Now riddle this me Batman, could a "mobile" chip" like you claim could run these games? Sorry if i got a little ranty but i'm tired of this missinformatiom abouf the Switch to show how "it just a handhled" which is not to true at all!

@premko1 my bad - thought you were in the U.K.!

Where is the Wreckfest review?

@BANJO Agree , where by Toutathis ?

The reason people often refer to it as a handheld is because the games themselves are running natively on the device that you hold in your hands, which iirc is running on an SoC commonly used for tablet devices (a big reason why the "switch pro" rumours took off was due to Nvidia releasing newer tegra SoC's)

in terms of specs and comparison to similar devices there are various places and people who could do a much better job at explaining than i could similarly to comparisons between performance on multiplatform games (its why digital foundry is commonly mentioned since they often go into the specifics regarding the games)

None of this is a putdown towards the switch, its one of my favorite systems of all time and having a handheld device with TV out is always nice especially after the ds and 3ds had no such option, the whole idea of being able to choose how you play is why i end up playing on the system far more than other systems over the past few years.

@premko1 in England here and its not anywhere nearly as hot and wet today as it was a few days prior at least.

@Mgalens Here its hot and no sign of rain . " Thanks " to weather I`m not in the mood to play anything ( now I`m downloading Sonic Colours in wup form )

I`ve played Roller Champions today and it`s ok game . The graphics are fine for a small screen and it`s fun just to ride in skatepark zone. Oh , and the price is right

@premko1 9/10 From me. I got it physically on release day. An amazing port, graphics tuned down abit to run on Switch but it plays beautifully...

@BANJO Please tell me you are joking.....

@Mgalens Still, it's a dedicated home console with handheld aa a second option.

@TheMelodiusRose It's a fine port, I've put 6/7 hours in so far to it. A very solid game.

@BANJO Oh...glad you are emjoying it even if it's a rushed job by Ubi in an effort to increace the game's poppularity.

@TheMelodiusRose Sorry we are speaking about different games. My fault as I'm speaking off topic. I'm talking about Wreckfest on Switch... 🤣

@BANJO My apologies! But i agree, Wreckfest looks and plays fantasticly on Switch.

@TheMelodiusRose It really does. It's a great port. 👍

The premise looks intersting but that's abou it. No thank you then. Thanks for the review

Looks decent enough when displayed on a TV, especially with customisable graphics modes and upscaling.

Really fun game, and I'm sure it will be further optimised going forward considering its in Open Beta. Would recommend!

@TheMelodiusRose whether you like it or not, it IS a handheld console that can hook into the TV.

You can take any metric you like, but the best example is the wattage. The Switch runs at 5W, whereas home consoles that have a constant power supply are around 200W.

It is a chipset made for mobile devices (NVIDIA Tegra).

It is running on ARM architecture, which is almost exclusively used by mobile devices.

I could go on. I love the Switch, and its impressively powerful, but it is a handheld system that just-so happens to connect to a TV. There is no way to deny that fact.

I like the idea and the overall aesthetic, but i just couldn't really manage to do much and nor could anyone else i was playing with.

@TheMelodiusRose I didn't say all 3rd party games look bad on the Switch, I own a lot of good looking games on the console, I've had it since launch day & love my Switch. I also enjoy other great consoles, think Alex did a video on why they like their Series X a while back. Worth a watch & has my favorite line from NLife, "Hello lovely people.." for starters! For Witcher 3 or DOOM Eternal, it certainly looks much better 60FPS running in 4K and with ray tracing for the latter. So would say yes, in instances like that where performance is better on another console then it should be rated as such, like in this review.

@Kilamanjaro Ummmm...yes you did. Besides even without the fancy ray tracing and 4k the games still look and run great and that's all that matters.

Tap here to load 74 comments

Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...

Stardew Valley Creator Working On Version 1.6, Includes "Some New Content"

Review: Portal: Companion Collection - A Nintendo Debut For Two All-Time Greats

Portal: Companion Collection Launches For Switch Today

Let's get started, you monster

Fall Guys Free-To-Play Reaches 20 Million Players In The First 48 Hours

"massive thank you to all who have stumbled"

Nintendo Launches "Super" Switch Sale, Up To 50% Off Some Huge Games (North America)

Roll up for the "Big Ol' Super Sale"

Review Yurukill: The Calumniation Games - A Truly Bizarre Blend That Works Better Than It Should

Review Gamedec - A Gripping, Gritty Cyberpunk Detective Adventure

Review Portal: Companion Collection - A Nintendo Debut For Two All-Time Greats

Review Wreckfest - An Absolute Banger (In A Good Way)

Review Roller Champions - Passable F2P Action, But Barebones And Sorely Lacking On Switch

Nintendo Switch Online - Every NES, SNES, N64 And Sega Ge...

Every Nintendo Switch Online Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Ga...

Pokémon GO Spotlight Hour Times: This Week's Featured Po...

Every Nintendo Switch Online N64 Game Ranked

Four Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Games Have Been Added To S...

Best Sonic Games Of All Time

Developers Don't Take Kindly To EA's Single-Player Gag On...

Mega Drive Mini 2 Games List - Every Genesis And Mega CD ...

Best James Bond Games On Nintendo Systems

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Special Edition Pre-Orders Have Go...

Where To Buy Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Collector's Ed...

Upcoming Nintendo Switch Games And Accessories For July A...

Join 1,321,314 people following Nintendo Life:

© 2022 Hookshot Media, partner of ReedPop. Hosted by 44 Bytes.