The developers experimented with gameplay features, including the inclusion of open-ended level design and greater environmental interaction, an organic skill progression system, and the removal of fixed time limits, many of which had not been implemented in an extreme sports game before.

The retrospective reception of Aggressive Inline has similarly been positive, with reviewers praising the game's innovations as prescient to the design of later titles in the extreme sports genre, particularly the subsequent adoption of many of its features within the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series.

Controls involve the use of the D-pad to move and buttons to jump and perform tricks, including grabs, flips, grinds, wallrides and manuals.

The player can also interact with environmental elements, such as vaulting from rails, grabbing and spinning around poles, skitching on the back of moving vehicles, and bailing out of tricks.

The game also supports multiplayer in which two players can complete head-to-head challenges in modes including getting the most points during a run, performing the best trick, and collecting the most hidden items.

[16] Project manager Randy Condon noted that the developers struggled to fit to the "tight schedule" provided by the publisher due to the "ambitious" scope of the game's design.

Several features, including competition stages and receiving bonus points for clearing gaps, were removed due to time constraints.

[13] Condon stated the design objectives of Aggressive Inline were to combine the features of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games based upon the engine used to create Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2.

The developers also aimed to convey a "strong sense of humor and fun" in the game, designing levels with challenges that would allow players to "unleash havoc" and "alter the world" to expose additional ramps or rails.

[19] Full Fat were an independent development team that had had previously worked on a Game Boy Advance port for Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2.

Describing the game's levels as "really quite huge", GameSpot noted the absence of a "rigid goal structure" allowing the player to "skate around at their own pace".

"[30] Eurogamer described the game's levels as "larger", "a lot more dynamic", and "designed with a healthy serving of wit and intelligence", noting that the inclusion of unlockable areas was a "clever way of increasing replay value".

[38] IGN highlighted the game's high framerate and animations as "excellent, fluid, smooth and pleasing to the eye",[18] whilst critiquing the character models as a "noticeable shortcoming", describing their design as inconsistent, "low-polygon", and "less realistic".

Several critics have remarked that the game introduced several innovations that predated the features of titles in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series.

In 2006, Edge noted that Aggressive Inline preceded features used in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, including the introduction of career stages without a time limit.

[50] Similarly in 2002, the IGN review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 noted Aggressive Inline offered a "serious challenge" to Neversoft, using it as a point of comparison for several of the new features in the game.