Hands-On Preview: Aggressive Inline Featuring Bouncing Breasts would have been a better title.
I still don't know a whole lot about extreme sports. Of course if I keep writing all these previews and reviews about extreme sports that'll eventually change. Then maybe somebody I'll know exactly what a manual (or any of the hundreds of other weirdly named tricks) is.
Next in this long line of extreme sportiness comes inline skating and Aggressive Inline. Formerly known as Chris Edward's Aggressive Inline, my only guess in why the name was dropped is because very few people even realize you can be a professional skater. But they can be and apparently one of the things they like to do is wild psychotic flips off of amusement park rides. Like all good extreme sports games Aggressive Inline will feature a ton of different two player options, a career mode, and a promised "deep" Create-a-Park editor.
Aggressive Inline will feature nine different skating and a whole list of professional skaters who I've never heard of. If the names Jaren Grob, Taig Khris, Eito Yasutoko, Franky Morales, Mat Lindenmuth, Chris Edwards and others mean anything to you, well then you probably know more about extreme sports than me. There will also be non-professional female skaters in various states of hooker wear. Also, and I swear I'm not making this up, Acclaim has said the women will have fully animated breasts. They tout this as a feature.
As far as the demo plays you're given the choice of three skaters: Jaren Grob, Franky Morales, and Chrissy. You're also given access to the game's tutorial and the first skate park: the Boardwalk. The game itself plays very solidly. There's a good sense of speed with only a small hint of slowdown every once in a while. I'm chalking that up to the words "Demo Version" though and hope the framerate will be consistent by the real release.
The Boardwalk level is extremely large and colorful and detailed and just wow. There's a giant spinning scrambler, two pirate ship rides (one shaped like a shark), a ferris wheel, and a pier. All of these rides are constantly moving and you can grind off each and every one of them. And that's only a third of the level. The rest is blocked off because this is a demo. The amount of freedom in this game is amazing. Like every other extreme game sports in existence your goal is to score as many points as you possibly can. Unlike other games though, Aggressive Inline isn't timed. Your game is based off of how much "Juice" you have. You get Juice by performing lots of wicked tricks (did I just say wicked?) and when you run off a long string of screwups, your Juice goes away and it's game over. You get additional Juice by performing objectives that are given to you by the people that populate the level. They can be point based, trick based, or maybe you have to fetch something for somebody. The trick system of Aggressive Inline is good, but it inherits the button mashing style of most of the genre.
The graphics to Aggressive Inline are just amazing. That's really the only word I can think of. Wait, let me consult my thesaurus. Gorgeous. Stunning. Dazzling. Look at all those words. They are all the truth, Aggressive Inline really impressed me with its look. I seriously can't wait to see the rest of the game. When the framerate stayed solid the skaters looked pretty good too. And yes, for those that have to know, Chrissy's breasts did indeed jiggle during the game. I realize this is one small step closer to reality in games, but part of me can't help but think "why god why" is this necessary? And like a true extreme sports enthusiast the music is great. Featuring a soundtrack with Sublime, Hoobastank, Limp Bizkit (I guess they're popular, but still... Limp Bizkit?) and more, it's shaping up very good. The two songs featured in the demo definitely didn't disappoint.
