Skate city review12/25/2023 ![]() Depending on your stance, one thumbstick represents the front foot, and the other the back foot. Session's unique play feel is delivered via a combination of its physics system and the controls. Many more hours in, just timing a 360 flip to clear a curb and land on a concrete planter can still go wrong in all manner of ways.ģ60 flipping a stair set and landing manual before popping out with a second trick might take an hour or more to nail. In your first hour, you should start to hit kickflips on the flat. The motivation to play is to explore skateboarding, and the reward is landing tricks, often after a considerable investment of time. You won't even get a trick name displayed when you successfully land it. ![]() And yet this is a game with no score system, no hidden collectibles, and very few opportunities for stunt skating. What will be familiar to those that have spent time with the Tony Hawk or Skate games is the setting a vast urban expanse explored in three dimensions, littered with street furniture perfect for grinds and flip tricks. In its own peculiar, imperfect way, it captures more about skateboarding than any other game that came before it. While the likes of the sublime OlliOlli games - with their emphasis on timing the landing of tricks - expertly translated the spirit of skateboarding into a playful video game form, Session is unashamedly devoted to realism. As such, like real skateboarding, it is a hard, frustrating, and deeply rewarding experience. So many years on, creā-ture Studios has taken Skate's lead and run with it, delivering something so committedly in simulator territory that it could be considered a genre-mate with Train Sim World as much as with the Tony Hawk games. Here's Session's launch trailer now it's fully left Early Access. Its innovative thumbstick-based control system inspired by the subtle foot movements of real skateboarding meant it felt much more directly informed by the sport that inspired it. Then, in 2007, EA Black Box debuted the beloved Skate, which at least alluded to simulation. The skill ceiling Hawk's games offered certainly loomed high, but almost anyone could leap in and quickly skate like a pro, prodding merrily at all manner of buttons. To deconstruct what that means, the conversation inevitably starts with an iconic series.įor many years, the Tony Hawk games triumphed in abstracting skateboarding tricks out to various series of button combos, letting players string together impossible trick lines that could pass through a whole level. In doing so, they've built something that does a remarkable job of capturing the essence of real skating even if that approach sometimes comes at the expense of what makes for a consistently enjoyable video game. Developer creā-ture Studios has strived to deliver a skateboarding simulator. Certainly, it is not as hard as real skateboarding, but this is a game that is profoundly challenging, and one that makes you think like a skateboarder. ![]() That is the mindset that has clearly founded the design of Session: Skate Sim. Availability: Out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.Rather, to succeed is more than enough of a payoff. It's not an achievement recompensed in any kind of currency like score. But the moment you pop the board high, flick it with a foot just enough to spin once beneath you, and successfully commit to the landing, the reward is immense. It takes hours of investment and a deep resilience to failure to get there. Landing a kickflip while moving along? Sure, today there are wildly more complex tricks out there, but it's still a tremendous achievement. The journey to mastery is one counted in years - or even decades. Imperfect, unkind, and rough round the edges, Session captures more of real skateboarding than almost any game that has come before. ![]()
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