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.