Session: Skate Sim Review
Warning: Session is a hard game and will test your patience. Those aren’t my words; they’re the words of the developer, Creā-ture Studios itself, splashed verbatim on each of Session’s trick list menus. That’s a belated caveat for the presumably bewildered people mining the menus for shreds of advice on how to actually do anything in this diabolically difficult skateboarding sim. With a two-stick control system that flies in the face of generations of muscle memory, Session is a complex but very grounded simulation of street skating that can appear wonderfully authentic when executed well. However, despite the fact that it’s just emerged from several years of early access, it doesn’t quite appear fully ready for release: physics bugs, shonky trick detection, and unfriendly mission design are regular frustrations.
Since its debut demo back in late 2017, Session has been previously pegged by some as a spiritual successor to EA’s Skate series. To be honest, it’s not really a great comparison. Session’s stick-based trick controls may sound akin to Skate’s on paper, but the reality is Session’s two-stick system is far more complicated. In fact, the single-stick Skate-like “Legacy” controls Session introduced into its Early Access build back in 2020 have actually been entirely removed in the 1.0 version. Adapting to Session’s two-stick controls is now compulsory.
Just like rival 2020 skateboarding sim Skater XL, in Session each thumbstick represents a skater’s corresponding foot, and executing flip tricks and grinds requires precisely finessing each stick like you’re trying to crack into a safe. Turning controls are mapped to the triggers, a mind-melting obstacle that took hours for me to hurdle after decades of that being a
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