It's hard to imagine the motivation for this game. We probably don't need another average extreme-sports game, and we definitely don't need another mediocre racing game. So, why on Earth would it make sense to create a game that offers the weaker parts of both genres? And, all this on a platform that has fewer games than ever before, making blunders more obvious by leaving games more exposed. There's nothing necessarily 'wrong' with the graphics of X-bladez: Inline Skater in the sense of 3D issues or poor programming, but a horrible sameness sets in after just a few levels, and it isn't relieved at any point during the game. Someone made some cool decisions on the character design, and the illustrations for both the manual and some of the in-game stills look cool, but a simple title like Razor Freestyle Scooter fairly drips with style compared to the graphics and presentation of X-bladez: Inline Skater. When I saw that each character has a favorite musical style, I was hopeful that the soundtrack would change to suit the player I chose, but nothing like that was the case. Bland, forgettable music holds sway on each successive track, but since completing a run only takes a few minutes, your suffering will be short.

The apparent proposition of X-bladez: Inline Skater is that gamers want to play inline skaters and do tricks, but they also want to race down narrow tracks and avoid obstacles. They want to collect items, like in other extreme-sports games, but the items are only as difficult to reach as it is to steer left or right. After all the items are collected and the overly high qualifying score has been reached, gamers want to rerun the track as a race against an opponent whose artificial intelligence most closely replicates that of a common houseplant. So, you tell me? Are you one of the unwashed masses who play-tested in a focus group and requested this mish-mash of bad gameplay? Or is this just a convenient way to ship a title in the waning days of a 5+ year-old system and hope to make some money?

To back this up, let's talk about disjointed gameplay. It's a game with tricks, but we all know that cool tricks are usually made more cool when they can be strung together, which is near impossible when you have a minute or two to race a narrow track and get only as much air as the jump in front of you and approaching fast can provide. It's like the gameplay style of some extreme-sports title you'd expect on a portable, but without the simplicity or speed of those games. Barely half of the game is actual racing, and the racing levels are so poorly executed as to be not much more than a repetition of the 'trick' levels. I put trick in quotes because the point totals required to qualify in a level are impossible if you're really racing the course normally and trying tricks. The only way I found to reliably progress from level to level (and the game lets you do this) is to let the CPU steer while you do trick after trick after trick to get the points. Once you reach the qualifying number, you can skate for fun. But, when the qualifying number is 14,000 and a run full of tricks only gets you between 5-8,000, something is wrong. In other words, the expectations for a first-time player are totally ridiculous. And since there is only one track and 2 racers open by default, qualifying for the second race could be a long and boring process. Repeating the same 3 or 4 tricks over and over was also boring, but at least I could qualify. How did anyone find this acceptable?

Getting through races means avoiding lots of obstacles by steering or jumping, and you'll need to be pulling tricks constantly and scouting for objects at the same time. The pick-ups are voluntary and add little to the gaming experience, except for the best X-bladez: Inline Skater feature, which is unlocking Flapjax the Monkey! He's cool, but not cool enough to save the game.

Sometimes 'difficult' is just a nice way of saying 'unfair.' In this case, I can't really stress how pointless and frustrating the first hour of X-bladez: Inline Skater would feel to someone who had cut their teeth on solid skating, scooter or BMX games and just wanted to pull some cool tricks. You get suckered into the idea that playing to the next race will change things, thinking it has to get better and that you're just on a bum level. But, things don't improve. Many of the trick moves are near impossible to pull off, and nothing works in sequence as we've become accustomed to in other similar games. The skaters basically move themselves, and the AI during races is pitiful. So, don't get me wrong. The game is not hard, it's hard to enjoy. With almost zero challenge, you'll blame yourself and try to figure out what you need to be doing to improve things, but X-bladez: Inline Skater is really just a lost cause.

The basic story on control is that X-bladez: Inline Skater doesn't even ask you to propel your own skaters. They move forward, and you just need to push right or left to take them around obstacles. You press (X) to jump and can control the power of the jump by how long you hold the button down. In the air, you can pull tricks, and not completing a trick before landing means lost points and lost time. It's safe to say that falling at any point during a qualifying race results in an instant loss. Time is taken off the clock, the requirements to qualify are incredibly steep, so you really can't afford wrong moves, especially later in the game. Of course, if you use my patented technique as outlined above, you might get to actually enjoy a minute of the track and skate a little recklessly, but otherwise you're doomed to this sweaty-palmed hell of pushing buttons constantly and wondering if some errant hay bale in the final stretch will erase all your hard-earned progress. No game should feel this frantic. Activity is good, and extreme-sports have a certain spirit of 'go for it,' but wild and crazy isn't the same thing as manic. Trying to pull tricks to reach your point total and avoiding obstacles and controlling this slow racer around a narrow, short track is an exercise in teaching yourself useless skills that don't do anything for your enjoyment of your PlayStation.

PS2: Of course, you won't find the graphics improve much, being as bare-bones as they are, but the load times will improve.

Games should be fun. Racing should be exciting. Sports should be challenging and competitive. PlayStation has an insanely large library of quality titles in both Racing and Sports categories, and many of the older ones are on deep discount at your local game grocer. So, even at 10 dollars, I say you have too much choice and opportunity to play a good game to even consider buying or renting X-bladez: Inline Skater. Life is too short. Steer clear of this stinker, or risk skating your way across thin ice, falling in and realizing that you probably could have come up with a better use for that 10-dollars plus tax.