Just thought I'd add my opinion here.

I didn't like barrel rolls to start with because they only seemed to work about 80% of the time - I even went and bought a new Dualshock controller because I thought my Sixaxis ones were faulty (not that I regret it, because I wouldn't go back to the Sixaxis now).

Anyway - this all changed when Fury came out - either I suddenly became better at barrel rolls, or they improved the way they work - because now I get a 100% success rate (unless it's a very short airtime and there's not time to complete it) - so now I enjoy them ... I think that they add a lot of skill, risk and strategy to the game which would be missing otherwise.