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0 Developed by Crea-ture Studios and Illogika, Session: Skate Sim is the latest simulator title to hit consoles and PC. With a much-loved previous release, I wonder how this one will stack up.
A Souls-Like Skateboarding Simulator
Having never previously checked out a Session title, but being a Tony Hawks Pro Skater (THPS) fan I thought this would be a great title to check out. Keep reading to find out how I get on.
Gameplay
Jumping straight into the game you are greeted with an extremely brief tutorial. It provides you with a little know-how on how to get a couple of tricks down. This includes a simple ollie/nollie and a couple of grinds. Along with this you also learn how to control your board. Now, I say learn to control your board. However, after completing it multiple times I still struggled with how difficult and unresponsive some of the tricks were.
I must add here that I am not a skateboarder, I own one purely for getting from to A to B and know of a few tricks. But that’s mainly due to spending days at a time on THPS. I can’t help but feel that if you do skateboard, you might find the controls more natural. After all, this is a skateboarding simulator and not a platformer.
Session: Skate Sim slowly takes you on a little journey to help you get to grips with the game. It takes you around the map giving you certain tasks or missions. These are based on getting to places and speaking to people street skating and pulling off certain tricks. On completion of these, you unlock extra items, earn in-game currency and level up.
As you get to know the area, you can take the fast travel bus to get around. This makes it a whole lot easier when travelling between the missions you are given along the way. If, however, like me you were really trying hard to get to grips with the game I skated as much as possible. There is an abundance of ledges and ramps on the way to really hone in on your skills within the game. Trust me this is needed!
Within the game, you also have your own space where you can customise your skater and create new board setups. All of these extra customisable items are all achieved via in-game purchases or unlocks.
I delved into the Session: Skate Sim settings to see what other control options were available and found legacy controls. Once these were activated it did make the game slightly more enjoyable. However, this obviously didn’t change a couple of things within the game that I thought could have been improved. It is also worth noting that these controller options have now been removed. The only other part of the game which I couldn’t get on with is the camera angles. They all felt a little odd and slightly un-natural, again this could possibly be due to me being new to the game and not having fully got used to it.
Graphics & Audio
When it came to graphics, it felt like I was playing a previous-gen title. Taking a look at a lot of the next-gen titles now available it feels like Session: Skate Sim could have been so much more. I didn’t have many issues within the game, but when using photo mode you could go out of the map, and this looked a little odd. It was almost like the assets used started below the play level. This didn’t detracted from playing the title in any way shape or form, purely because you are focusing on what you are doing, rather than looking around the shops as you cruise by.
The audio on Session: Skate Sim is brilliant when it comes to in-game music. The radio stations are varied in genre and there is an abundance of great tracks to skate along to. The stations you listen to can be changed during gameplay, you are not forced to listen to a specific track or genre. During the game you meet various characters throughout the city and sadly there is no voiced dialogue, everything is subtitled on screen. I think if they had been voiced this would have added an extra layer to the audio experience.
Longevity
Session: Skate Sim feels like one of those titles that is hard to master. A title that you could potentially put thousands of hours into and still have more to learn or perfect. As mentioned earlier I was playing on easy and struggled with a few bits. So for someone at my level to come in and progress through the difficulties, I feel it could take over your life.
If popular when released I could see this being expanded to have new areas available, and different seasons so the map could potentially have additional items throughout to change up the gameplay. The possibilities are endless.
Final Thoughts
Overall I didn’t enjoy my time in Session: Skate Sim, I understand that it is meant to be a realistic simulation title. However, even the easier difficulties are still hard to master. Personally, it felt like there was a massive gap in the tutorial for someone who doesn’t skate. I think if there had been demonstrations on what buttons to use and when rather than just saying do a PS (Yes it said PS and most people will not know what PS means).
I do want to play it more, but it is hard to perform something when you do not know how to do it or chain it together with other tricks. I also found that simple things such as a switch were extremely unresponsive. The game is not broken nor is it poorly developed. However, I found it hard to get on it. I, therefore, award Session: Skate Sim a Thumb Culture Bronze Award
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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