"Reasonable extreme sports title with unoriginal game play and control"

Extreme sports has fast become one of the most popular gaming genres since the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made its appearance back in 1999. Skateboarding games are numerous, and range from the Street Sk8er series (consisting of two games), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series (which has five games at the time of writing this review), as well as many other single-series game on the PS1 and PS2 including Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, ESPN X-Games Skateboarding and Thrasher Skate and Destroy. Though skateboarding is no doubt the most popular sub genre of extreme sports gaming, BMX has featured in various games including the Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX and Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX series. Surfing has made an appearance in various titles on the PlayStation 2 (including California Surfing 2, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer and Surfing: H30).

And of course there is snowboarding, which has been massively popular ever since the Cool Boarders series on the PlayStation, but has found more popularity amongst gamers on the PS2 with Evolution Snowboarding, ESPN Winter X-Games Snowboarding 2002 and the incredible SSX series. Extreme scootering has appeared in the form of Razor Freestyle Scooter on the PS and wakeboarding was featured in Wakeboarding Unleashed on the PS2. Throughout all of the years of extreme sports from the end of 1999 to the start of 2004, only two inline skating games have featured on the PS2. The two titles are Aggressive Inline and Rolling, which has so far only been released in Europe. Aggressive Inline made a valiant effort to break through into this seemingly rare genre, and succeeded in style. A few years later in 2003, Rolling made an appearance.

First appearances are disappointing, as players will be treated to the same sort of levels that have been featured in countless other games in the extreme sports genre. The first level, NorCal School, consists of a variety of rails and ramps which the player can choose to flip, spin, grab or grind on. Though the level is large and there is plenty to do, it does get boring very quickly due to the lack of any interesting places to go after a while. Even the one secret area in the form of a large gym is only interesting for a while, as the place contains a small amount of ramps and grindable objects, and little else. Other levels include a train station, a large marine mall, a derelict factory and a business park. There are fourteen levels in all: Ten normal levels and four competition levels. Though some like the Marine Mall and Business Park are fun to play for a while, most levels seem to lack imagination and in some cases seem poorly designed when compared to other games such as the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series.

Control is very similar to that seen in many other extreme sport games. The D-pad is used to make the skater turn left and right or to stop. X button is held to make the skater crouch and is released to jump, the L1 and R1 buttons are used to make the skater spin left or right while in the air, the square button while held with a direction on the D-pad allows the skater to perform a variety of grabs, circle button is used to spin and triangle is used for grinding on various objects throughout the levels. So there's nothing really wrong with this control system, but players expecting a massive upgrade on previous extreme sports titles are likely to be disappointed. Saying that, the control is smooth and anyone with previous experience of the genre will find this game's control very easy to get used to.

While Aggressive Inline featured some reasonably designed realistic tricks, Rolling features a massive amount of realistic tricks that inline skaters are sure to recognise. This is where Rolling truly is fantastic: The level of detail that the makers have put into ensuring every single one of the tricks is accurate. The various air tricks like the Bios, Corkscrews and Flatspins look amazing, but the grind tricks are even better, and feature almost every single grind: Backslides, Miszous, Royales, Souls, Unitys, X-Grinds, they're all here and are brilliant to view. Another nice addition is the alley-oop (reverse) versions of every grind. For example, a makio involves the skater grinding with the outer edge of his skate on the rail or ledge, with his other skate being grabbed with his hand. Performing this trick backwards would be an alley-oop makio. This is something that Aggressive Inline didn't feature, and this works extremely well in Rolling.

The special tricks as well deserve a mention, as some may seem very unrealistic when they are performed. Among these are the Triple Backflip, The 1260 and The 1440. All three of these tricks have been tried on half pipes in real life: The Triple Backflip was attempted by Matt Lindenmuth, The 1260 (three and a half rotations) by Shane Yost and the 1440 (four full rotations) by Eito Yasutoko. All of these tricks are well-designed and look superb in the game, though they do seem to be easily performed and even the most difficult Triple Backflip trick can be completed with only average height. There are also a number of special Grind and Grab tricks which can be selected from the Edit Tricks section of the pause screen. The tricks are unlocked during the game, and this more than anything else may encourage players to play through the career mode.

Graphically the game is good, with special attention given to the skaters in the game to make them look as realistic as possible. Other characters in the levels aren't so well designed however, and some of them seem to have had very little attention put into their design. The level graphics are simple but effective, and though some seem very empty in places most areas are interesting and varied in terms. Similar to Tony Hawk's Underground, the game not only has a menu where players can select which music they want to listen to, but also divides the music into three different genres: Rock, Hiphop and Eclectic. There is a custom selection where selected songs can be played and the rest can be left out, and there is also a random selection which lets the game make the decision on what songs to play.

In a strange move, the makers of this have decided to ignore the new style of extreme sports and instead base their game on the old and overly used style. The difference is that while games like Tony Hawk's Underground have no time limits in the levels and players are free to explore for as long as they like before accepting a goal, Rolling uses three-minute time limits in all of the levels. Some of these levels are so massive that having only three minutes is not enough, and as some of the goals require lots of exploration an increased time limit would have been welcomed. The goals are also disappointingly unoriginal, featuring the standard 'Collect 5 objects', 'Match another skater's tricks' and 'Score points' goals that have been seen in many other extreme sports games. Though the game does succeed in having some goals open up secret areas, most are simply too easy or far too difficult to be enjoyable. Overall, Rolling tries hard to be a good extreme sport game in a the inline skating sub genre of extreme sports, but fails due to the unoriginal control system and dull goals.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/15/04