Aggressive Inline (video game)


Aggressive Inline is a 2002 aggressive inline skating video game developed by Z-Axis, published by Acclaim Entertainment under their AKA Acclaim label, and released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. The game features professional inline skaters, including Chris Edwards, Eito Yasutoko, Franky Morales, Jaren Grob and Taïg Khris.
A different game of the same name was developed by Full Fat and released for the Game Boy Advance.

Gameplay

The gameplay focuses on completing goals given by talking to characters within each level. While some goals involve gaining a certain number of points in a specific time, many of the goals involve doing tricks on and off of pieces of the environment. Another innovative feature focused on a player leveling system where the player would perform better in different areas of skating skill by practicing them repeatedly. For instance, if the player does many air tricks throughout the course of the game, each successful trick would create points in the player's air trick statistics. When the points reach a certain number, the player's air tricks will move up a level, making it easier to perform air tricks faster and more efficiently. The same actions apply to grinding, speed, wall riding, skating backward, etc.

Reception

The game received praise for its wide and interactive environments, comfortable control scheme, and innovative gameplay. At the time, it was considered to be a breakthrough competitor to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, even being the first to include some elements that would later become standard in the Tony Hawk games, most notably not confining players to rigidly timed play sessions. The game did, however, borrow some elements from the Tony Hawk franchise, notably the seamless combo transitions from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, which had introduced the revert mechanic. The game generally received good reviews for its style of play, with the average review score for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions being 85%, and the Gamecube version receiving an 88%. The Game Boy Advance version received the worse scores on average, with some critics, such as IGN's Craig Harris, lamenting that Full Flat did not recreate the home console version's structure in handheld form, instead opting for a check list plus top score approach to level completion.