Bomb The Hill Early Access Review: Bring The Skater Rush To Your Room In VR

Bomb the Hill combines adrenaline-fueled VR gameplay with a storyline inspired by real-life skateboarding culture to deliver a thrilling and poignant look at the early days of the sport.

Gaming and skateboarding have a rich history together thanks to landmark franchises like Tony Hawk and Skate. There have even been a few VR skating games, like the aptly titled VR Skater and Virtual Skate. Now Georgia-based VR studio Pokodzima is throwing its own board onto the track with Bomb the Hill, which looks to capture the rebellious spirit of 70s skater culture through immersive gameplay and a history-based narrative.

It began life as a prototype funded by the Oculus Publishing Ignition program, and was even featured during the UploadVR Showcase earlier this summer. An open beta test was offered on Meta Quest a few months ahead of Bomb the Hill’s September 10 Early Access release on that platform. Bomb the Hill will also launch for PC VR sometime later this year.

Bomb the Hill features a narrative campaign inspired by the stories of real-life skaters of the 70s. This story is told in 15 chapters (or Episodes), with the main character receiving messages from an old tape recording he found. Along the way, he will explore the hills and canyons of the Midwest United States, dodge the police, and share insights about his family and why he wants to reconnect with skateboarding as he enters the titular Bomb the Hill competition.

Overall, Bomb the Hill’s story takes a nostalgic tone, both in recalling the good times people have while sharing their love of skateboarding and the regret in how life’s challenges can drive people apart. At the end of the game, you see actual photos and captions explaining some of the first skating competitions, which is pretty fascinating and touching in itself.

Bomb the Hill can be played either standing up or sitting down. While standing, controlling your skateboard requires you to stand sideways with one foot in front of the other, just like a real skater. You build speed by swiping your arms forward, brake by holding your arms out to catch the wind, and steer by leaning from one side to the other.

You can slide by pressing down on the grip triggers and steering your controller like a driving wheel (though I honestly rarely used this after the introductory tutorial level), and crouch down for extra speed by either ducking your head or pressing the A button (you will be using this a lot in the more timed/speed-focused tracks). It can be tricky at first, and if you aren’t careful, you can find yourself tripping and spinning in your play area.

If you find the standing motions too difficult to pull off, or you can’t stand up for whatever reason, you can also play the game while sitting. Bomb the Hill automatically adjusts for this whenever you load an Episode, and the controls are more or less the same. I played this way most of the time, as I found it easier to steer. Either way you choose, the controls are fairly intuitive and it isn’t long before you are gliding down the slopes like a pro.

As you shred your way downhill, you build up points by bumping through smaller obstacles, pulling off impressive jumps, and going long distances at top speed. Keep in mind that if you go too far off the road or bump into a larger obstacle like a car, you’ll wipe out and have to restart from a checkpoint – or, depending on which Episode you’re on, the beginning of the course.

Episodes vary between timed runs where you have to reach the end of the course without wiping out too much, races with CPU-controlled skaters, and even a few speed runs that require you to hit a certain target speed before you reach the finish line. Oddly enough, many of the earlier, tutorial-like levels feel more difficult than the later races – though there are a few tense runs toward the end.

Many of the courses give you branching options in the form of ramps and shortcuts. You can choose to play it safe and stick to the main road, or take the risk of a wipeout in exchange for an impressive jump and some extra points. Flying through the air after a jump is quite a rush, though landing without spinning out of control takes a lot of trial and error.

Bomb the Hill looks pretty good. While most of the scenery is the same canyon landscape, there are plenty of different buildings and landmarks littering each course to keep things fresh. Some Episodes take place at night, making it even more challenging to navigate, and these are also more visually striking due to lit street signs and glowing trails behind the rival racers.

The music is a fun mix of high-energy punk rock and relaxing jazz that matches the overall skate-culture feel. The sound effects also do a great job of making you feel like you’re rolling along a blacktop road, especially when paired with the rumble feedback in your controllers.

Aside from the volume controls for the music, voices, and sound effects, there is a field-narrowing comfort setting that reduces your field of vision into a single oval looking straight ahead. This is for people with motion sickness and difficulty with the wider display, but I personally found it too distracting.

Bomb the Hill Review – The Final Verdict

Overall, Bomb the Hill is a fun experience that captures the speed of racing down the highway in virtual reality, and its story paints a surprisingly touching picture of nostalgia, community, and the ups and downs of an ever-changing world. Skateboarding fans will definitely want to check it out, and it might make for a fun workout if you wish to play it standing up. Just be careful not to wipe out for real.

You can check it out on Meta Quest now, or wait until it comes to PC VR sometime later this year.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines. As an early access release, this review is unscored.