Session: Skate Sim

As a fan of the sport and as someone who has followed the development of this game since it was back in its KickStarter days, have bought it across multiple platforms, it is hard to recommend this game in it's current state. Back in 2016/2017 I was so hyped to see that we were finally being brought a hardcore skate sim but man what a Development Hell this game has gone through! Whatever the class above Abondonware is, this would be it. At this point its more of a half shell of what a Skate Sim should be and it's a shame to see where this game has gone in comparison to what was supposed to be. The game is ridden with mission bugs that have been around for years and if it didn't come out before the Ai boom you would've thought the story was Ai generated. The animations still look like how they did back in the .80 early access days, it took almost 2.5 years after the game was launched to "fix" the goofy animation, the grind system is alright if it locks in, anything over a 180 looks unnatural. you can only do flip tricks, the replay editor sucks, transition skating? LOL Good luck. Lip tricks, Darkslides, and Caspers were all in experimental until this year which they still don't work right anyways should have just took them out like they did the grabs back in the day. And to top it all off on launch we didn't even have a throwdown animation, we just got that THIS YEAR to get that as well. The devs released 5/6 DLC packs before actually attempting to "fix" this game and have split the community ever since. Overall the game can be fun and rewarding at certain moments but that quickly goes away once you try to set up your next line and you remember how broken the game is. Stick with SkaterXL or Skate 4 if you want to scratch your skateboarding itch. Avoid this game until it gets fixed (if ever).

enjoyed playing this game for 400+ hours, and genuinely always had a great time with it, even in its arguably unpolished state. The latest update, though, totally killed it for me. the new camera movement is nauseating and actively makes the game more difficult. The new 60 fps cap is just a plain downgrade from what we had before and ruined my muscle memory and feel for the game completely. I tried briefly to roll my game back to one of the previous versions but it seems to have been made unavailable. Dissapointed to see the game actively made worse while the devs continue to push out one paid dlc map after another

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. Bust a Move: 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 job for the left stick – and only compounded by the fact that turning is still mapped to the left stick in Session… when the skater is off the board. Unfortunately there aren’t any grab controls, but even without them I was regularly turning my hands into pretzels trying to make tricks. This isn’t a bad thing per se; it’s just very challenging. However, the complexity does feel likely to be too much for some, such is the steepness of the learning curve here. I’m not confident that a lot of non-skaters or casual skateboarding fans would stick it out to crash through that initial barrier, though Session doesn’t necessarily do itself any favours in that regard. There’s actually a pretty long list of smart gameplay tuning options that can make things noticeably more manageable, but the initial tutorial doesn’t really point any of that out. The most helpful one for me was the option to change the mapping of the sticks from left foot/right foot to front foot/back foot – purists may scoff at this concession, but all the controls being in reverse when riding switch was absolutely cooking my brain. But there are many, many more – pop height, grind alignment, hell, even the gravity can be adjusted. None of this truly turns Session into an arcade skating game, but it can make it a little more friendly. That said, it is very rewarding – in its own stern way. I’ve once again found myself swept up in the loop of an unforgiving street skating simulation (unfortunately there’s no proper vert skating or grabs) simply because I love to seek out unassuming staircases, ramps, and rails and bust tricks (and presumably digital bones) for no particular reason, until I get bored and move somewhere else. It should also be said that the list of other places to move is impressively long, with dozens of authentic urban maps and spots of varying sizes spread across three cities: New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. With time of day effects and plenty of grimy, granular detail, the maps look excellent – especially at night, lit by the bright lamp of the chase camera. They are a little static and lifeless, though. For instance, piles of lightweight cardboard boxes and wheeled shopping carts are rooted to the ground and completely non-interactive, and there are no moving vehicles despite being set in the hearts of three of the most bustling cities in the US. Also, while NPC pedestrians can be turned on – an “experimental” option Creā-ture has partially buried in a menu for unfinished features – there are no NPC skaters to add a bit of atmosphere. Trick Tok Creā-ture has put plenty of work into Session’s replay editor, and it can produce genuinely great clips. There’s an impressive assortment of camera types and filters available to create some properly cool skate videos with Session’s tools, although it really makes zero effort to teach you how to use them. Unlike Skater XL, Session boasts an actual career mode, with tasks assigned by guest pro skaters scattered throughout the maps. Despite the fact most of the enjoyment I gleaned from Session’s skateboarding sandbox came from simply coasting around the maps and making my own fun, there is something to be said about having some overt objectives to conquer, especially since there’s no multiplayer. These objectives are not always particularly well explained, though, and instructions can’t be repeated if you miss something. This makes for some really annoying moments if you miss a tip, or forget it after returning later, because the mission log text doesn’t explain any extra criteria. It also has an annoying habit of sometimes not crediting the tricks it wants us to complete, even if it appears we’ve pulled them off. One early challenge to manual across a pad refused to detect the required manual despite multiple attempts. It adds a second layer of trial and error on top of an experience that is entirely built on trial and error, and it isn’t welcome. Turning on the trick names is a slight help (Session has trick names off by default) but it doesn’t solve everything. This is actually part of a whole layer of weird bugs that undermine Session overall, from sudden and inexplicable bails on flat surfaces to ugly board clipping, and janky on-foot navigation (especially ascending and descending stairs) to seriously odd moments of limb spaghettification, like your skater is about to be sucked through a black hole. These are a real shame considering some of the awesome attention to detail elsewhere. For instance, I really love how the boards themselves slowly accumulate realistic wear and tear as we thrash them with grinds, and the sound design is genuinely excellent. There’s a wealth of subtly different audio cues for every situation, and everything from the hiss of free-spinning wheels to the clunk of steel on steel sounds spot-on. The soundtrack is a bit downtempo and dreary, though; Creā-ture has pitched Session as a tribute to the golden era of ’90s skateboarding but there’s nothing about the fistfuls of 21st century chillhop here that helps makes it sound like one. Verdict Session may be reminiscent of the similarly hardcore 2020 skateboarding simulation, Skater XL, but it picks up where its rival stalled by arriving with a far more substantial map selection, plus a simple campaign that stitches it all together. I also can’t deny the addictive charm of seeking out a spot and having dozens of attempts at sticking a slick trick sequence, for no other reason than it looks cool as hell when you nail it. Despite its unfinished feel and the unflinching precision it requires to play, I really am finding it rewarding and relaxing. However, while Creā-ture Studios’ unapologetically difficult-to-master ode to skateboarding is packed with a palpable love for the sport, it’s also packed with a few too many frustrating bugs – and its unsympathetic tutorial and mission design severely undermines its approachability.

Game is still a buggy mess, despite leaving early access four years ago. Nacon just recently added a license agreement to their four year old game which specifically disallows modding the game to fix bugs. Why? Are they planning to follow in EA's footsteps and add microtransations? I cannot understand why they would add this new license agreement if not.

现实中这样玩玩就算了，游戏里还是要注意安全

I used to do darkslides, my favorite kind of trick, all the time. After the latest update, they've been reworked in such a way that the timing to catch the board upside down is entirely arbitrary and requires an essentially *frame perfect* input to work. It used to feel much more natural and intuitive to catch the board for any flip trick, because you could even catch the board upside down by accident in a way that at least felt like it was your fault for making the catch input too early. With the latest update it is easier now to catch the board PRIMO and do a PRIMO SLIDE than it is to simply catch the board upside down, slide or no slide, after a half kickflip. It makes absolutely no sense that the timing for a primo is more forgiving, and the flow of the game has been mostly ruined for me with such an arbitrary restriction on darkslide catch timing. The board can be fully upside down, but if it isn't PERFECTLY parallel to the ground (180 degrees flat) when you try to catch the board, you won't even bail, the game will force you into a normal kickflip or boardslide, often bugging out animations to make sure your darkslide doesn't happen. It feels like the game is actively fighting against me wanting to have fun in a way that I have been having it for about 200 hundred hours playing already. I previously played this game through Epic Games Store but bought another copy on Steam because I loved it so much. Now it feels like a totally different game.

I haven't even played the main story. Most of my hours are just skating a single ledge/handrail and replaying it over and over until satisfaction.

When I was young, playing Tony Hawk and Thrasher games, I thought how cool it would have been to be able to play a game where you actually have to learn the trick that you're going to do. I wanted things more realistic, but I knew, even back in 2000, that it was a pipe dream. Then, skate. came out, along with the subsequent sequels. Those were such a breath of fresh air for me, they gave skating an actual challenge. They presented the semi-dual stick controls, and made it innovative. Pro's, challenges, but things just felt more REAL. No more floating and able to hit a 900 just jumping off the ground. After around 3000+ hours in Skate 3, I found this, along with Skater XL. I bought both, but I sunk much more time into this than XL. This has much more of a fluidity and realism that XL just doesn't quite grasp. I also have put in, I believe, around 40~ hours of gameplay on the new skate from EA. I have nothing against those games, they all have something unique about them that make them feel different enough and look different enough that I understand why people like them. If you're looking for a realistic skateboarding game that you felt that skate. was too weak in the challenges, then I would suggest this for anyone in that mindset. Nothing has felt more fun, to me, than feeling like a 19-22 year old again at 35.

I love this game but the new update ruined my favorite part. With the new update switch tricks now mirror regular. Why would we want that? Do they not skate? Switch tricks should look different. That’s part of why they’re cool. Heath Kirchart once said “switch is boring”. I don’t agree with that but now in session, switch is boring.

As much as I hate to make this review negative, I kinda have to. Was looking forward to playing this for forever, got it in a star deal at fanatical so it was incredibly cheap, so it's not too much of a loss. But when it's been almost 4 years since release, and the tutorial/advanced tutorial missions are so bugged and don't even register that you're doing the correct flicks of the joysticks, despite the trick counter on the hud recognizing, and none of the discussions or any help on reddit indicates that there's not been any changes or reworks, idk man. For what the game is worth, the camera is okay but clunky. Changing the rotation speed in settings does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Music is nice, as well as the open world(aside from the random times I got knocked off my board for going over a slightly raised ramp) Definitely not worth $40/whatever the price is for all the dlcs. Especially if they're just gonna tag on more content and not address what's keeeping a lot of people from playing the damn game past the "tutorial".