Aggressive Inline

"Solid for it's time...still nice now."

It's Acclaim fault. Acclaim never was good at promoting games, or giving them the right support. Look at the Burnout for example. Had potential, but Acclaim ignored it and the series never caught on till EA picked it up. They did the same thing here. X-Axis is a talented company, but once again Acclaim ignored it and this game was on the shelves of Blockbluster for five dollars in less than five months. Acclaim is now dead for making such bad business choices. Too bad X-Axis hasn't been picked up yet, because I feel they could make an excellent first party title for one of the upcoming systems. The reason I feel this way: This game came out around the time of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. THPS 3 still used the two minute timer, many still to this day say the game was very short and had mediocre level design.

Aggressive Inline didn't have a timer. The career mode was basically like a freeskate mode, like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 was, which I'm convinced was influenced by this game. There was interactive people who gave you challenges here and there, which was also something THPS4 picked up. This game was also very long and challenging, which, once again, THPS4 decided to do. In fact, one of the only things Neversoft didn't use that X-Axis used in there engine was the health bar. So you can see that X-Axis was ahead of their time.

Gameplay 7/10

Sorry, but I kind of to compare this gameplay to THPS 3, since they were both kind of competing. Tony Hawk wins this one with it smooth and flowing gameplay, while Aggressive Inline was sloppy. You tend to miss rails and jumps while slipping here and there. It also a huge fetch quest a lot of the time, (something games today seemed to be getting criticised a lot for). But it still was a nice attempt. It's not bad, it's just kind of boring really.

Controls 7/10

Kind of stiff at first until the game gets going. Even then though, you never seem to be in complete control of the steering since it's so floppy. The tricks are definitely a plus though. Those were pretty responsive.

Level Design 8/10

Oh man this was a hard one. I decided to go with an 8 for it the levels are huge. (Some are bigger than any level in the THPS series.) This levels never get old for you always seem to find out more and more about each one. Big plus. Only problem though is everything seems so thrown together. In fact if the levels weren't so big that I probably would have given it a 7. Sometimes you ride a rail that takes you right off the edge of the level, which only makes you think, who thought that was a good idea. Still, it's better than THPS 3 in most cases. Just make you don't get lost too easily.

Graphics 6/10

Nothing great about them. Kind of bland, but there was some great some use colors. Nice try again though.

Music 6/10

There's some nice tunes here and there though a lot of them sound like it was made in the garage of your punk friend from school with no music talent. No actually, it's not that bad. There a nice amount of songs of there so thats satisfying enough.

Overall 7/10

The game has it's flaws but if X-Axis was given a chance they could have fixed them up for a sequel. It's satisfying most of time. Problem is no one cares about it anymore.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/05