Playing Session With Its Pro Skater Stars

thegamer.com:

I’ve been attempting the same trick for 20 minutes at this point. A simple boardslide.

I begin with my skateboard in hand, drop it to the concrete, then kick and push until I reach the stairs, where a wrought iron railing extends downward for about five feet.

Twenty minutes in, I have biffed it in every conceivable way. I’ve flown forward, like an unconscious Superman, onto the cement below. I have missed the railing and landed sideways halfway down the steps. At one point, my back axle made contact with the railing and stayed there perfectly, a slow-motion metal-on-metal smooch. This got a half-cheer, half-laugh from the journalist behind me, who had been patiently watching my progress as I got closer and closer to landing the trick.

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I first played Session: Skate Sim in 2020, a few months into its time on Xbox Game Preview — not long after I had 720'd my way through Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. After that much time in the Birdman's sneakers, Session felt almost hostile. The camera's position, which mimics the board height perspective frequently seen in skate videos, made the experience disorienting. Developer crea-ture Studios' decision to map each thumbstick to one of your skater's feet caused the control scheme to flip each time I turned around, so if I wanted to do an ollie, I would need to hold down the right thumbstick, or push up on the left thumbstick, depending on which direction I was currently facing. I adjusted fairly well to steering with the triggers, but practically, I was falling down much more than I wanted to. I played for an hour or two, then put the game down, annoyed.

But now, I'm not on my couch at