Airblade

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Airblade

Developer(s)	Criterion Games
Publisher(s)	Namco
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2
Release date	^PAL November 09, 2001 ^USA January 28, 2002
Genre(s)	Futuristic sports game, story based
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Media	DVD

Airblade is a futuristic sports game developed by Criterion Games and Namco. It was released on January 28, 2002 for the PlayStation 2 platform.

Airblade is quite interesting taking the idea of futuristic skateboarding as seen in the hoverboarding sequences in the film Back to the Future Part II and combining it with a story. Unfortunately, the game sold very poorly as it could not match, just wasn't as known, or hadn't gotten as much hype as games such as Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 and SSX.

[edit] Premise

The game is about Ethan, Kat and Oscar. Oscar, the inventor of the Airblade, gets kidnapped by an evil businessman, who is his former boss, that wants to use the invention for bringing himself profit. Then Ethan, a keen skater, decides to hunt down the business man himself to get his friend Oscar back. This will bring the player from the player's local part of town to downtown, and eventually, when you've completed all the stages in story-mode, the player will end up in the businessman's penthouse. Here the player will be captured and deserted. The player must escape this last level using the player's vast levels of skills and timing to complete. The player must jump, grind and swing his way over poles, monorail tracks, and falling down elevator tubes. This is not an easy task, and you need good skills to complete this stage.

[edit] Rankings

Depending on how well the player performed in a level (part of the history) the player is given a rank. The ranks rang from F to A, with F being bad and A very good. A player can also gain the rank S in a level, for perfect performance. This is nearly impossible. When the player earns rank "A" in all of the levels, the player can play as Oscar in multi-player, and if the player manages to obtain "S" in all levels, the player can play as the businessman.

The Rank system calculates the rank, based on the player's speed, how many times the player had fallen, how many trick points the player earned, and how many of the extra objectives the player completed. (ex. player can finish a level without knocking all the guards down) To obtain the magical S rank the player must be perfect in all 4 categories at the same time!