Session: Skate Sim Review | New game network

The skateboard subculture was dominant and thriving in the late ’90s, having a profound impact on daily life during that era. Whether it was music, fashion or Mallrats window shopping holding a skateboard and thinking they looked “awesome” when hanging out with friends. It was hard to ignore the imprint it was having on young people growing up at the time. These influences didn’t end there; They’ve also appeared in video games, the most notorious example being Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise. But like all trends, they go through phases of popularity and obscurity. Although recently there has been a resurgence of skateboarding games where players new and old alike have experienced jumping in the air from a virtual quarter pipe. After two years of development, Session: Skate Sim left Early Access and was released at version 1.0, but how does it compare to other skateboarding games?

First of all, it’s important to highlight that Session: Skate Sim is a simulation game designed to mimic the feeling of sitting on a real skateboard. As a result, it’s a startling contrast to the arcade frenzy of Tony Hawk, where the push of a button or two can pull off mind-blowing tricks in a matter of moments. Instead, it tries to convey the feeling of learning to skate in real life, as it’s a lengthy process of teaching yourself through timeless trial and error. So if you’re looking for an instant adrenaline rush, like snorting wasabi paste after a challenge, you won’t find it here.

For the most part, the story is fairly uninteresting and will struggle to capture your attention. The gist of it, though, is that you’re introduced to an old school friend named Donovan, who comments on how great it is to see you back in action on the board. Then you discover that you were involved in a brutal accident in which you were obliterated while trying to pull off an incredible stunt and have been absent from the scene for several years. Donovan then conceitedly says that he recorded the whole incident and that the footage is one of the most viewed videos on his social media; With friends like this, who needs enemies? With renewed determination, your character begins to relearn the basics to begin his long journey to becoming a pro skate genius once again.

The main story is divided into missions that require you to perform certain tricks under certain conditions in order to move on to the next task. Sometimes these objectives can be quite tricky, like the advanced manual and flip trick missions you encounter at the beginning of the game. Probably the most challenging is the Skate Shop Meet quest, which requires you to complete a series of moves that are sure to get steam out of your head as this is a gruesome challenge. While there’s a healthy amount of missions to take on, the storyline will never motivate you to complete them, as there never are many notable developments happening, which is a bit of a shame. But when, after many tries, you finally meet the requirements for a mission, it’s incredibly satisfying.

The controls will be the biggest barrier to entry for most players, no matter what difficulty level you choose for yourself. At least if you’ve played Skater XL, you’ll find it easier to get used to the controls since the button commands are very similar. The thumbsticks dictate foot movements; the left leg is paired with the left stick, and surprisingly the right leg is married with the right stick (so a controller is required, keyboard/mouse play is not supported). If you want to accelerate on your board, you can move your left foot with the X button, and your right foot corresponds with the A button. To perform a basic trick or jump, you need to crouch with one leg by holding down the appropriate stick and then flick the other. If that’s not enough of a jawbreaker, performing a BS 50-50, one of the moves you’ll learn in the basic tutorial, takes a few steps. To perform the trick, you need to find a grindable surface like a flat bar, head towards it with some speed so your jump has some height, and then hold LS up and RS down. As you can see, there are tons of input commands to perform the simplest of tricks that will no doubt be frustrating and equally daunting for many casual gamers. It will take a lot of exposure to the controls for the muscle movements to come naturally to the controller. But for those who take the time, it’s hugely rewarding when the control scheme finally clicks into place and you start performing tricks you once struggled with effortlessly without even thinking.

You’ll probably have the most fun ignoring the central storyline and finding your own entertainment by wandering around the sandbox environment. It’s almost therapeutic in a way just to smack your skateboard onto the concrete while pushing your board wherever you feel like it, with no destination or goal in mind. You could travel to a skate park and try a nose stall on a ramp or try to get the cleanest heelflip down a flight of stairs; The possibilities are endless as the whole world feels like one big playground to explore.

Aesthetically, the sandbox world looks great and is quite large to explore. You can skate through famous Americana landmarks like San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City. Almost every district looks different and has subtle environmental factors that make places stand out, from graffiti sprayed on walls to everyday amenities you would see in a city. Toggling in the options lets you add pedestrians to the world, and there’s even an object dropper that lets you add rails and ramps to the environment, making the world feel a little fuller. Perhaps the coolest feature is the day and night cycle. As evening falls, there is a scenic atmosphere as you skate through the area while dimly lit lanterns illuminate the nightlife of the city streets. The character designs are relatively decent; Before you start the game, you have a selection of preset models to choose from, including famous skaters, or you can create your own character. Luckily, you can customize their clothes for a bit more individuality, and after completing missions, you’ll earn in-game currency to buy new clothes, or you can choose to buy new skateboard customization gear like deck graphics, rails, or wheels.

The camera angle is unusual in Skate: Session Sim, but not necessarily bad, just different. It adopts a third-person perspective, but you’re following your skater at a much lower angle than usual, almost as if you’re looking through the lens of someone following with a camcorder. The influences of camera photography don’t stop there; If you want to embrace your inner movie director, there’s a replay editor you can use to capture great moments to be proud of as you skate around town. In addition, you can add many cool effects to the footage, including changing the length and camera angle of the clip. You can also add keyframes to specific seconds in the clip, allowing you to change the depth perception or the speed of the footage at different points.

On a technical level, some performance issues hamper the experience. Occasionally the skater character would drive through some environment objects and break the immersion. But the constant crashes are what really hurt the experience. This is usually done in the options menu, which doesn’t sound too bad on paper. But the problem is that for tricks with complex input requirements, you often refer to the list of tricks in the menus. Hopefully they can address this aspect in future updates, but for now it’s really affecting the learning curve when trying to understand the controls.

Session: Skate Sim strives to be a realistic experience that embraces the street skating mentality. It attempts to represent the endless hours of practice you would experience in real life when trying to learn the physics behind a stunt for the first time, and for that reason uses a complex control scheme centered around the thumbsticks. While the control layout manages to create a realistic tone, this then makes the simplest of movements an ordeal and will likely scare a good chunk of casual gamers out of the game. If I hadn’t met Skater XL, which also focuses on thumbstick controls, it probably would have taken hours for the panel layout to come naturally, but I had a lot of fun once I finally understood the commands and was able to do some pull off amazing stunts. Unfortunately, the game feels unpolished at this point due to the constant crashes, making the price difficult to justify. This is disappointing as an incredibly deep and challenging game lies beneath the surface, but it’s not quite there yet. Ultimately, players who can ignore its shortcomings and take the time to learn the difficult-to-master control layout will find plenty of satisfaction.