Session Review - Virtual Skateboarding Doesn't Get Any Better

thegamer.com:

I'm gonna come right out and say it: Session is the best skateboarding game ever made. Yeah, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is a classic, but it's really a point-scoring arcade game disguised as a skating sim. EA's Skate is great too, and a more accurate recreation of the sport, but still very much a video game with little concern for gravity or physics. Session, on the other hand, is skateboarding. It's a simulator in the truest sense, capturing not only the technical intricacies of skating in a way no other game has before, but its more abstract qualities too.

Related: Session Interview: How A Tiny Indie Studio Made The World's Best Skateboarding Simulator

Everything in Session is governed by a brutally realistic physics system. The best illustration of how crucial it is to the experience is how grinds work. In other skating games your board will 'snap' to the rail, ledge, or whatever it is you're trying to grind. The strength of this differs between games, but there's always an invisible guide keeping you locked in. In Session, however, pulling off a successful grind is, as in real life, a matter of speed, precision, and angle. Misjudge either and your trucks won't lock, you'll lose momentum, and you'll bail.

If you want to perform, say, a noseslide, you can't just ollie towards a rail, tap a few buttons, and watch your skater magically transition into one—the way tricking usually works in skating games. You have to come in at the correct angle, ollie at just the right moment, twist your front foot, then position the board so that the nose connects with the rail and your trucks lock in—and with enough speed that you won't slow to a sudden stop and fall. It's tricky at first, and you'll probably swear a lot. In this game, even