by:	October 24, 2004

Originally written by Mary Jane Irwin

Since Tony Hawk Pro Skater swept the nation, it seems that everyone has been trying to cash in on the extreme sports craze. It makes logical sense. Not only was THPS, with its depiction of pro skate boarding, a huge success in terms of sales, it boosted the popularity of the sport. Now, every other publisher is releasing their own versions of extreme sports, but most have ended with little success. We’ve witnessed Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer, and soon, Shaun Murray’s Pro Wake Boarder will make a splash onto consoles. With all these games following THPS’s model, it’s hard not to feel like you’re playing a cheap imitation. Few of these games have touched the actual spirit of THPS, until now.

Aggressive Inline brings the world of inline skating to your Xbox. AI is full of attitude. There are busy streets, vibrant colors, and lots of sound. Bump into a pedestrian, they’ll start crying, complaining, or cursing at you. Knock over a stack of boxes; they’ll be in your way when you come back. Almost everything is interactive, and almost everything is a ton of fun.

Gameplay
Let’s start with the basics. There are four modes of play: Career, live the life of a pro, Freeskate, skate around and do whatever you want, Timed Run, rack up the most points in a limited time, and Multiplayer, where you can skate with your buds. All modes are self explanatory and very similar to what you’d find in THPS. The multiplayer is for two players (duh), and you can only skate in levels unlocked in career mode. Games range from Most Points, where the winner is the player who gets the most points, Best Trick, where you battle out for the best trick score, Egg Hunt, hunt around for hidden items, Twenty One, find cards in hidden in levels without going over 21, and Animal Rescue, skate around rescuing animals (this is weird, in my game, I ended up with five monkeys crawling around the back of Eito).

Aggressive Inline gives you the option of playing as seven different pro inline skaters. You can choose from Jaren Grob, Taig Khris, Franky Morales, Matt Lindenmuth, Chris Edwards, Sven Boekhorst, Shane Yost, Matt Salerno, Eito Yasutoko, and Sam Fogarty. In addition to these real life skaters, each level has an unlockable character. All skaters start out with their own set of stats (mostly 1 or 2 in each category), but unlike THPS, you don’t buy stat upgrades. Instead, your character “learns” how to do something better. If you do a long grind, your grinding balance will improve. Do you get a lot of air? You’ll be rewarded with an increase in the height of your jump. This is a really neat feature that rewards you for what you do well, and it also keeps you aware of what you avoid. If you don’t do a lot of manuals, it will show with shaky balance. This feature makes players attempt all sorts of tricks in order to round out their skater (instead of just buying their way).

Aggressive Inline only has seven levels, but it makes up for it in size. These levels are huge. Not only is the base level enormous enough to make Z-Axis get rid of the timer, but each level has unlockable areas that will only open after you complete certain goals. Part of the fun, is finding where these goals are. You’re forced to explore each level to find floating skates with red swirls around them. These appear above people or radios that will give you your goals (no more lists at the beginning of each level, but once found, the game keeps track of them). These goals range from helping a girl sell hotdogs, performing certain tricks for photographers, releasing the soul of a dead skater, creating and skating your own park, to grinding the arms of an Octopus carnival ride, and inflating a giant sea horse balloon. If you mess up, or don’t complete the task (especially ones where you have to amass a certain amount of points in a given time) the characters will harass you with comments such as “You suck” and “Don’t you have any friends who can skate?”

Each level has plenty to explore besides goals. The seven levels are themed. You can begin the game with the tutorial, which teaches you all the basics of Aggressive Inline. If you already know what you’re doing you can skip the tutorial and go straight to the Movie Lot (a Hollywood set), and by completing goals unlock the Civic Center, Industrial Plant, Boardwalk (complete with carnival rides), the Tuna Cannery, the Airfield, the Museum (you want to grind down a T-Rex don’t you?), and the Zoo, which is an Xbox exclusive. All levels are full of beautiful lines, where you can pull off a massive string of tricks. The level designs of AI are set up so that you’ll want to pull off every stunt possible (you won’t have to hunt for terrain). Of course, you’ll need to pull off tricks everywhere you go to stay on your feet. Instead of using a timer, AI introduces a juice meter. It is kind of like the special bar in Tony Hawk, but if you run out of juice, it will end your game.

In case you can’t manage to keep your juice, juice boxes are scattered around the levels to give you a quick boost. Green boxes replenish half your juice, purple boxes max out your juice, and yellow boxes extend the size of your juice meter. Also, hidden in each level is a key that will open up a hidden area on a different level. Each level also contains an attribute power up (which will increase a certain attribute by 1 point), and a special trick, which will let you perform one of your skater’s signature moves.

You’ve survived hearing about play modes and level designs, but how easy is this game to play? Seasoned THPS fans won’t have a problem picking up the controls, but soon you will notice that tricks are rather limited (because you’re on a pair of skates), so it’s more difficult to rack up monstrous combos. Basically, the directional pad controls your skater, holding down A will cause your skater to accelerate and releasing it makes him jump, B is the all purpose action button that allows you to talk to people or vault objects, Y will grind, and X will perform a grab. The black or white button will perform a cess (switch from forwards to backwards, and vice versa) and holding a trigger will make you spin (if airborne) or carve. Along with these basic controls, your skater can perform manuals (balancing on front or rear wheel of the skate), skitches (grab onto the back of a moving vehicle to get pulled along), vaults (leaps over waist high objects) and pole swings (which allow you to gain speed by swinging around vertical poles, or reach higher areas by swinging around horizontal poles). If you are able to memorize your arsenal of moves, you can do anything and go anywhere with your skater. Skater’s respond well, and normally do what you want (manuals can sometimes be hard to pull off). But, this is not a cake walk. Because of limited tricks, the learning curve can be steep, and the difficulty of challenges increases rapidly.

Graphics
Levels are beautifully detailed and contain several moving objects. As you skate you’ll notice shirts billowing and sagging pants. Skaters are beautifully animated. Max out your juice bar, flames will shoot from your skates. Sparks fly as you grind rails. Levels are so alive that you’ll often find yourself too busy looking around that you’ll forget about your juice bar. There are no noticeable camera problems and no slow down. It shows that Z-Axis put a lot of time into this game, because it’s just amazing.

Sound
Sound is great too. You’ll hear a grinding noise as you grind, landing on different objects will result in different sounding thuds, and any pedestrians you bump into will shout at you. The soundtrack is an amazing compilation of tracks that add some attitude to the game as you rip up the streets. Some featured artists are Hoobastank, Sublime, POD, Reel Big Fish, and Saliva (there are more). Not only is the soundtrack tight, but the game scans your Xbox and will include any tracks on your hard drive into the game (if you select them) allowing you to fully customize the audio.

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Aggressive Inline is one of the few really good additions to the extreme sports genre. It’s challenging, fun, and different. There is not all that much you can add to the genre (besides changing the featured sport), but skating around AI, everything seems new and exciting. The only thing wrong with the game, is that you can’t customize characters at all (appearance), limited tricks (noticeable to THPS fans), and that there are only seven levels. Not really big complaints, and even with only seven tracks, this is in no way a short game. It will take hours to completely beat the game and max out all stats with one skater, let alone all of them. Anyone who enjoyed THPS, should run out and buy your copy of Aggressive Inline, which is a breath of new life for extreme sports.

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