Hands-onAggressive Inline

We had the chance to take a look at a nearly complete version of Z-Axis and Acclaim's upcoming extreme sports game, Aggressive Inline, in which players can traverse seven different expansive levels and accomplish a number of different objectives. Aggressive Inline combines some original elements of gameplay with those seen in Dave Mirra's BMX games, as well as others drawn from such influences as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Airblade, and Jet Grind Radio. Despite the strides that have been made by its predecessors in the genre, considering the way that Aggressive Inline has handled its level designs and special features, the game appears to be shaping up as a thoroughly solid experience in its own right.

Aggressive Inline features a cast of real-world inline skating celebrities, including 2001 X Games Street Champion Jaren Grob, 2001 Gravity Games and X Games Vert Champion Taïg Khris, and other notables, such as Chris Edwards, Franky Morales, Shane Yost, Matt Lindenmuth, Sven Boekhurst, Matt Salerno, and Eito Yasutoko. In addition to the real-life skaters, there is a fairly diverse selection of original fictional characters. We got to check out Chrissy in action, who looks the part of a buxom, pigtailed teenager in a school girl outfit. Undoubtedly influenced by the subtleties (or lack thereof) in Tecmo's animation of feminine physiology, Chrissy's form is considerably bouncy. Other fictional characters are even more over-the-top, including a golden-hued, statuesque "Goddess" character, a robot named Junky, and a pirate with a single wheel on the end of his peg leg.

Playing with a character for an extended period of time will let you increase their basic abilities, but it is accomplished in a manner unlike the stat-gaining system used in many other games, in which accumulated points are distributed as desired. Aggressive Inline uses an experience point system that rewards players based on how they play. If you integrate lots of grinds and manuals in your runs, then those corresponding stats will raise, just as if you were to concentrate on catching big air and pulling off vert tricks. Thus, your character's attributes will grow in a particular direction that suits your personal play style.

While extreme sports games in the past have used a timed level countdown to limit the length of each run, Aggressive Inline instead uses a juice meter, which functions in a similar way to the special meter found in the Tony Hawk games, although with some noticeable differences. Each run begins with an already depleting juice meter, which fills up with successfully performed tricks. When the juice meter is topped out, your skates leave trails of sparks and fire in their wake, and tricks are generally more impressive--you'll catch more air or be able to pull off longer grinds with ease. Since you can continue to pull off tricks to extend your juice meter, a capable player could theoretically continue extending their run indefinitely.

The skaters in Aggressive Inline are capable of a great number of moves, including a wide variety of vert tricks, grinds, and everything in between. You can grind on virtually any rail or edge, and you can hop from rail to rail, linking grinds together over gaps and extending their lines. You can skate forward or backward, which lets you access different sorts of manuals and tricks. And of course, there's a wide variety of spin-and-grab moves that can be pulled off to rack up the point total, which in turn will unlock later levels.

Much like the revert in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Aggressive Inline lets you do a transitional move between vert tricks and manuals, called the cess slide. Appearing much like how a hockey player puts on the brakes, the cess slide transitions into four different types of manuals, depending on whether your character is facing front or skating backward.

In addition, through the context-sensitive use of the action button, you can further extend the repertoire of tricks normally associated with games of this type. Lampposts, telephone poles, and other types of bars can be swung around, horizontally or vertically, and released for a momentum-driven leap in the desired direction. You can interact with characters that you come across in each level with the action button, and generally they will explain one of the level's hidden goals to you. And in a manner reminiscent of Back to the Future or Electronic Arts' Skitchin' for the Sega Genesis, you can skitch on just about any vehicle in the game. We were able to see Chrissy hang off the back of moving cars and even an airplane as it taxied down an airstrip.

Perhaps the most impressive thing we got out of our experience with Aggressive Inline was the innovative level design that Z-Axis has implemented. There were seven levels in all, placed in such locales as a movie lot, cannery, boardwalk, and airfield. Each level was spacious and featured many different lines and ramps where tricks could be pulled off, but each area also concealed event sequences, which open up additional areas in each level. For example, in the movie lot stage, there is a huge boulder suspended by three chains over a chasm. If you grind over the chains, the coils snap, and the boulder is released, which proceeds to roll across the set, wreaking havoc along the way. The boulder eventually comes to a stop after smashing through a bridge, in the process opening up new areas in the level and creating a new gap at the demolished bridge.

Even more importantly, as you continue clearing levels and exploring new secrets, previous levels will be unlocked in a way that reveals new areas and other bonuses. So instead of linearly progressing through each stage after reaching 100 percent, Aggressive Inline encourages you to proceed through a stage, do as much as you can, and then revisit it later to see what you've unlocked. This backward-and-forward thinking in regard to hidden areas and secrets should prove interesting in the final version of the game.

Aside from the single-player game, other proposed features should add considerably to the game's replay value. Players should find that the final version will include a split-screen multiplayer mode for competitive play, and a skate park editor, which if similar to that found in the Dave Mirra games should be flexible and extensively detailed.

Visually, the game looks fairly polished, with characters composed of approximately 4,000 polygons, and smoothly animated to boot. The sparks and flames coming off the skates were a fairly interesting effect, and the game leans heavily on the side of camp over realism--in fact, you can see Z-Axis' sense of humor in much of the hidden stuff that is revealed through gameplay. The levels are even more impressive, as they are truly expansive, and richly detailed--you can see tons of stuff throughout each environment, and most of the geometry can be used in cohesion with a trick, whether it's a rail for a grind, or need be leapt over in the pursuit of bigger air.

We also got a chance to listen to the game's final soundtrack, which is composed of the following recording artists: Pharcyde, Black Sheep, The Vandals, Saliva, The Ataris, Hoobastank, Student Rick, Eric B. and Rakim, Boy Hits Car, Reel Big Fish, P.O.D., and Sublime. The track selection is made up of a diverse mix throwing together the artists' bigger tracks, including Sublime's Wrong Way.

From what we've seen, Aggressive Inline looks promising and should be a lot of fun for those familiar with extreme sports games, as well as those looking for an introduction to the genre. Aggressive Inline is scheduled to ship in May.