Session: Skate Sim Review

There was a glorious time when seemingly every extreme sport had its own videogame. From BMX to wakeboarding, none came close to the popularity of skateboarding games. Whilst the majority of these titles were arcadey and allowed players to pull off impossibly long combos and land from immense heights without so much as a wobble, in more recent years we’ve seen more and more realistic skating games. Cue Session, where the clue is in the title as this may just be the most accurate skateboarding game to date. But does this added realism mean less fun?

Originally released into Early Access back in 2019, Session has come a long way in terms of development. The team at creā-ture Studios have vastly improved upon the original build, and now the game is finally ready for its 1.0 release. Or, so it would seem. Despite how well Session performs compared to its first few years, there still seems to be a few kinks that need ironing out for it to be a solid full-priced title.

Session opens with an incredibly simple character creation that lets you select from a few pre-made skaters before jumping into a tutorial of the basics. Guiding the player is an old friend, whose dialogue was so irritating I mostly skipped the text in order to save what few brain cells I had left. Luckily for the player (and my sanity) he does not feature too strongly, as there is no story mode. Instead you’re given three maps to roam around in whilst tackling some basic missions that usually tell you to “go to X spot and perform Y move”. These are worth taking on though, as they reward you with cash or some new gear for your character. Early missions especially will help you learn the game's complex mechanics, so whilst it might be tempting to go and explore, they’re beneficial when starting out.

Although the graphics in Session aren’t incredibly high-end, particularly the character models, the environments look great and the animations of the tricks are truly fantastic. Whilst earlier builds had the skateboard clipping through players feet as it rotated underneath them, now you can see a character's legs move to avoid a collision with the board, and even if it seems like a simple touch, it adds an extra layer of realism to a title that is already heavily realistic. Smaller things like the menus and user interface look unfinished, particularly the bland screen you’ll see upon completing a mission, making it clear that this is definitely a game all about substance, not style.

The sound design is potentially as close to the actual sounds of skateboarding ever heard in a videogame. Boards pop and land with gratifyingly crunchy noises, and you can almost hear the paint peeling off the underneath of your skateboard as you grind a particularly rough looking ledge. The music — whilst not featuring any true bangers like the Tony Hawk’s franchise — hits the nail on the head when it comes to the sounds of skating culture, with lo-fi hip-hop beats and slightly more up-tempo indie tracks to skate along to.

Prepare to learn an entirely new control scheme; Session is not friendly to newcomers and will test your patience quickly. Altering some of the vast array of settings (such as how high you can ollie, or making grinds easier to successfully pull off) can alleviate the steep learning curve somewhat, but you’ll still need to learn a lot. You’ll push your board with one of two face buttons — which one depending on if you prefer to push regular or mongo — and turn with the left and right triggers. You can get off your board at any time (although the animation makes this look like a feature not quite ready for the full 1.0 version) to navigate pesky obstacles you can’t quite trick over as well as being able to place objects in the world at the press of a button. The main appeal of Session is how it uses the analogue sticks to faithfully represent how a skater's feet move to perform tricks. Hold the right stick down and (if you ride regular stance) you’ll crouch, readying yourself to pop into a trick, which will vary depending on which direction the left stick is pushed. There is so much more to it as well, with pressure flips, varials, and late flips to add to your bag of tricks.

Moving on from fliptricks to grinds and lip tricks and the same rules apply for the most part. You’ll position the board in mid-air (or as you’re nearing an edge in the case of lip tricks) to land into a specific grind, but don’t expect Session to assist you by snapping the board to the rail as seen in most other skateboarding games. Nope, precision and timing is essential here, land in the wrong position or get the timing wrong and you’ll eat concrete. It’s something I never felt I perfected, and just like real-life, I found myself resetting to my custom spawn point over and over again to finally pull off a smooth boardslide down a 12-set of stairs.

When you do get to grips with left foot=left stick and right foot=right stick then Session is unbelievably rewarding, and even a simple shuv-it into a tailslide will have you watching your replays to capture that moment of triumph. The physics system plays a big part in successfully performing tricks and whilst the player model looks robotic and lifeless, everything relating to the skateboard is fantastic.

Despite not being very user friendly — I had to search online for a lot of tricks and features that the game doesn’t explain — with things such as primos and darkslides being disabled in the menus by default, and no tutorial on how to pull them off once enabled, I still had a great time with Session. It’s unpolished, has no real objectives outside of some basic missions, and features some off-looking character animations. But what it does have is some of the best skating physics, a fun set of maps full of hidden spots to shred, and a true sense of achievement when you finally nail down a line you’ve been working on for an hour (before spending the next hour in the detailed replay editor to create a work of video art).