Talk:Aggressive Inline (video game)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: IceWelder (talk · contribs) 21:50, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Will review over the weekend. IceWelder [✉] 21:50, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Appreciate it. Welcome any feedback to improve the article. I am aware you're simultaneously reviewing a few, so no rush. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 12:34, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

No worries, I have quite some free time on my hands until Sunday. Your article is first in line. IceWelder [✉] 13:53, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

This is excellent feedback and of a standard that is above the previous GAN reviews I've had, which I really appreciate. I'll let you know when I've actioned the below. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:31, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

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Infobox

• The cover art seems to be the same across all platforms, so the caption can be trimmed. Y
• "Publisher(s): Acclaim Entertainment (Released under the AKA Acclaim label)" - Why not just put AKA Acclaim as the publisher? Y
• The platform list should be in chronological order, so Xbox before GBA. Y
• Strongly recommend moving the release date sources to the body to a sentence covering the release (e.g. in Development). ? Citation information in the template for release dates seems to be fairly common. Given the text would be merely restating the release dates on respective platforms and regions without any additional detail on release, this feels like it would be unnecessary.
• Perhaps this is a better source for the NA GC/XB release, as the Annual Report was released some months in advance. Y
• The PAL dates are currently unsourced; I found sources here and here.Y
• For readability, order releases strictly by platform, not part-merging dates that happen to be the same. Y
• Are any credits (like Randy Condon) worth mentioning? Y

Lead

• The first sentence is a mouthful. Consider reducing it to year, genre, developer, and publisher; then mention the platforms as well as the GBA conversion after the development summary. Y
• "Developed by California studio Z-Axis," - Duplicate, should be removed. Y
• The article also duplicates several links, which should be reduced. I highly recommend using User:Evad37/duplinks-alt. Y
• Link "engine" (game engine) Y
• "using (...) as a foundation" -> "building on (...)". Y

• "with praise directed to" -> "with praise directed at" or simply "with praise for". Y
• "critiquing" is effectively a synonym for "reviewing", but it seems you wanted to express criticism. Maybe "faulted"? Y

Gameplay

• Images should have captions descriptive of their contents, e.g. "The player can perform tricks, such as frontside grinds, to score points." Y
• Link "aggressive inline skating" instead of "aggressive inline". Y
• When talking about the single-player mode, use the singular "player". Y
• "Gameplay controls" -> "Controls". Y
• "directional buttons" -> "D-pad". Y
• Link some of the technical terms. Y
• "Players are also able to use an 'action' button to interact" - Is the name of the button relevant? Consider "The player can interact". Y

• "Core gameplay in Aggressive Inline involves a 'Career' mode in which" -> "In the "Career" mode," Y
• Generally use double quotes, unless it's a quote within a quote. Y
• "a certain level of which is required to be met to progress to the next level" -> "reaching a certain threshold enables progressing to the next level". Y

• "Aggressive Inline features several novel mechanics" - "novel" feels like puffery here. Y
• "When the meter is depleted" - How does it deplete? Automatically? Y
• "by performing tricks, or collecting juice boxes" -> Remove faux Oxford comma. Y
• "effectively allowing them to continue play indefinitely" -> "effectively" feels redundant here. Y
• "Aggressive Inline also features an attribute system in which" -> "Through the attribute system," Y

• "In this version, players similarly complete challenges across a series of thirteen levels. In contrast to the console version, levels are" -> "While the player similarly completes challenges across thirteen levels, levels are". Y
• "with challenges consisting of generic objectives" - "generic" sounds like an opinion, which should stay out of the Gameplay section. Y
• "two Game Boy Advance players with a copy of the game can play various multiplayer modes, including a high score, trick attack, and highest combination challenge, using the Game Link Cable" -> "two Game Boy Advance players, connected by a Game Link Cable, can compete for the highest score, highest-scoring trick combo, and combo with most tricks." Y

• Lastly, large swathes of the Gameplay section are sourced from manuals. While not forbidden, this is rather uncommon. Any chance you could instead source this from reviews? ? Backed up with some additional citations. I've found it unusual that manuals are not more commonly used as they are deemed acceptable under WP:VG/MOS and reviews tend to be more imprecise and subjective in their description of core gameplay, but I imagine their overuse did tend to lead to heavy reliance on primary sources and copy pastes of WP:GAMECRUFT, especially in older articles.

Development

• Link "sports titles" to Sports video game instead. Y
• "The game and its console ports" - There are only console versions, so the latter part seems redundant. Y
• "within a time period of fourteen months" - Move this to a separate sentence. E.g., per the source, "The PlayStation 2 version was to be complete by May 2002." Y
• Is the acquisition relevant to the topic? It is never brought up again and if its occurrence during the development is mere happenstance, I would remove it outright. The follow-up sentence "although the acquisition did not take effect until after the release" seems incorrect as Activision/Z-Axis will have had to honor old contracts. ? Removed the additional text as you're right this is probably more informative for the developer's page and not the game. It is somewhat remarkable on the basis that Activision poached a company developing a competing product as they were creating that product.

• "The production of Aggressive Inline was intensive" - Intensive according to who? Y
• De-capitalize "Project". Y
• "expedite the development time" - "expedite" means to bring forward in time. Maybe use "speed up", "accelerate", etc. instead. ? I think this word is appropriate, but maybe the correct phrasing is that development was expedited, not the development time.
• What are "special gaps"? Y
• "we removed" -> "were removed" Y
• "including the "time required to perfect level geometry", the design and implementation of individual challenges" -> "including the "time required to perfect level geometry" and the design and implementation of individual challenges". Y
• "the features of the Tony Hawk series of game on the foundation of the Dave Mirra engine" -> The series should be linked as Tony Hawk's. "the Dave Mirra engine" sound slightly misleading as it could refer to the name of the engine. If you move this sentence forward to where you just explained what engine they used, it would suffice to just say "the engine". Y

• "Originally announced as Chris Edwards' Aggressive Inline" -> "Announced as Chris Edwards Aggressive Inline". Y
• Maybe mention here that this was under Acclaim Max Sports (per press release)? Y
• In the same vein, mention AKA Acclaim somewhere around here, maybe as part of the new sentence on the release timeline. Y
• "used motion capture recordings of the skaters at Woodward Camp" -> Did they capture all or just some skaters? "The skaters" suggest the former. ? Sadly there's no way to tell from the source text. I've shortened it to 'skaters'.
• "The developers implemented a novel feature" - Novel according to who? Y
• "loose fitting" -> "loose-fitting". Y

• The Development section should at one point mention how/why the GBA version came to be, especially to have a source for Full Fat. Y There doesn't seem to be much background information for the GBA version beyond its release, but added some sources.

Reception

• The review table is loaded and contains a heap of reviews that go unused in the body. Per the templates rules, either use them or remove them from the table. Y
• "received "generally favorable reviews" on review aggregation website Metacritic" -> The reviews weren't given on Metacritic, just compiled there. The wording I always use is "[X] received "generally favorable reviews", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic." Y
• After "in the extreme sports genre", fix the ref ordering. Y
• "Many reviewers identified" -> "identified" refers to objective truth, but it should be retold as an opinion here. Y
• Wikilink each publication on its first mention. Y

• "Critics praised Aggressive Inline's expansive" - Don't italicize the possessive; use {{'}}s or {{'s}}. ? I need to fiddle around with this to get it, not used to using it. Just removed the reference to the title in this case.
• Avoid overuse of "praised"; occurs in back-to-back sentences and seven times in the section (plus two more in the Retrospective reception section). Y
• After "so much to see and do in each level", correct the punctuation order per MOS:LQ. Y

• After "the character models are sharp", fix MOS:LQ. Y
• "critiquing" is again used for criticism. Try to find a better-suited alternative.
• Why is "facial features" in quotes? Y

• "Describing the soundtrack as "listenable", IGN described the soundtrack as" - Awkward duplication, consider rephrasing. Y
• "allowing players to copy their own songs for play into the game" -> "enabling players to play custom tracks". Y

• "The Game Boy Advance version of Aggressive Inline received a mixed reception" - Did it? The section introduction was that it received positive reviews. ? Yes, it did, but have changed to 'less favorable reviews' for accuracy. Game publications from this era seem to be notorious for providing lukewarm review scores to games that the reviewers did not seem to enjoy based on the content of the review. This is where the Metacritic benchmark tends not to be so helpful.
• "Whilst describing the port as a "good game"" - It's not quite a port, rather call it a "version". Y
• "described the gameplay as an average title" - What is an "average title"? Y
• Again replace "critiqued". Y
• What are "vert tricks"? Maybe add a link. Y

Reception -> Accolades

• The mention of the AIAS feels awkward here. The awards are linked, so naming the institution behind them feels unnecessary. Y
• In both sentences, remove the faux Oxford commas and move the mid-sentence sources to their respective sentence ends. Y

Reception -> Retrospective reception

• "with recognition that" - Opinions should not be presented as fact. Y
• Two more cases of MOS:LQ in this section. Y
• IGN is slightly misquoted here, and the game title is misspelled. Y

References

• For press releases use {{cite press release}}. Y
• Normalize all-caps names (ConvertCase.net is a good resource). Y
• Add missing authors for #10 (Douglass C. Perry), #16 (Dan Hsu, Che Chou, Shane Bettenhausen), and #47 (David Smith). Y
• Remove generic authors like "GameSpot staff". Y
• #5 and #27: Why is "[date mislabeled as "May 17, 2006"]" the titles of these sources? ? Just noticed this too! It seems that the dates on GameSpot's database were lost for pages written older than that date on the modern site. Not sure why someone put them on the title like that.
• Link some notable authors like Jeff Gerstmann and Matt Casamassina. Y

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@Vrxces: Above is my initial review. Feel free to strike through or reply to individual comments as you work on them. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 14:17, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

• @IceWelder: Done, mostly actioned with comments added. Welcome your thoughts. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 04:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  Nice work so far, I think we're almost done. Here are few additional comments:

  • I see you trimmed the caption to only say "Cover art". At that point, it could be left out entirely as its self-evident what the image is. However, you could also choose to restore the name of the depicted person. The caption also said "North American" before; is it different elsewhere? Y Yes, the EU art is different, but that may be minutiae. I've added in the name of the depicted skater.
  • The infobox currently mixes date formats. Y
  • Keeping the date sources in the infobox is fine, though I feel that, for completeness, the body should still have a brief sentence along the lines of "AKA Acclaim released Aggressive Inline for the PlayStation 2 in May 2002, followed by GameCube and Xbox versions in August." - ideally just before the GBA sentence. Y
  • I reckon it is "Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX", not "Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX" (appears twice). Ditto for "Chris Edwards' Aggressive Inline" -> "Chris Edwards Aggressive Inline". Y
  • "based upon the engine used to create Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX" - Previously the article only talked about Freestyle BMX 2. Did they share an engine? If so, just name the sequel for consistency. Y
  • The Nintendo Power review goes unused in the body, so it should be removed from the table. Y
  • Ref #14 should be de-capitalized. Y

  IceWelder [✉] 13:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  @IceWelder Cheers, let me know if there's anything else that stands out to do. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 02:33, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Alright, that should be it. Happy to  pass this article. Cheers, IceWelder [✉] 17:33, 23 September 2023 (UTC)