Review | Session: Skate Sim

Review | Session: Skate Sim – In the last few years you have a few more options when it comes to skate games. Tony Hawk’s Skater XL and Pro Skater 1 + 2 appeared in 2020, for example here Skater XL didn’t fare well, as the game felt a bit empty. The nostalgic journey called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 went like you here could read much better. The second, on the other hand, is an arcade skate game and it is precisely the simulation side that the creators of Session: Skate Sim, Crea-ture Studios, have tried to highlight. Now we will find out if this was a success.

Going into the mouth is also an art

When you start the game you will immediately get a message that the game is no laughing matter in terms of difficulty. With many hours of SKATE 3 and Skater XL in our hands, we thought it wasn’t that bad, but we have to admit that the game made us sigh several times. You will be introduced to controlling your skater with a short tutorial. With the two analog sticks you control your two feet, which means you’ll have to steer with the triggers. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it sure takes some getting used to. You will be a lot on your face during the first few hours, but that’s part of it. In this sense it is close to real sport.

The tutorial also introduces a kind of storyline: you play as a skater who had a lot of fun and is happy to see his old friends again. After being out of the game for a long time, you’ll need to brush up on your skills, with your friends giving you various assignments. Step by step you get to know more people and they continually assign you different tasks to do. These range from performing a certain trick in a certain location, to visiting the skate shop. There isn’t much more history to find, which is a shame. It’s nice to get money to complete missions, and with that you can buy new decks, wheels, clothes, and all sorts of other materials. Plus, you can still perform iconic stunts in certain real places that real skaters performed there.

Although you have a lot of missions, you will mainly have to create your own fun. What really helps in this is the extremely comprehensive video editor. Like you in ours preview could read, it’s mainly the depth of that editor that’s worth it. For example, you can adjust different camera angles, video speed and even the time of day. With the editor you can edit your makeup images in many ways. Definitely worth a deep dive for the creatives among us. It’s quite fun to pick a certain spot, do a few tricks on it, put together a nice montage. All of this is a good option, because skating itself is really cool.

Extremely realistic gameplay

As noted above, the controls take some getting used to, but after a few hours they are loosened. Also, the tricks seem quite intuitive and realistic. For example, for an ollie, you will first need to lower the rear foot joystick, then raise the front foot joystick. Most of the tricks start from this basic principle. However, you’ll have your hands busy with the controls, as you need to be precise with your inputs, otherwise you’ll be able to get a very close look at the floor. Everything will seem a little strange at first, as you will have to drive with your triggers, but if you don’t give up, you will be presented with very deep and realistic gameplay that is very satisfying when everything clicks.

However, it’s not all rosy and moonshine. Thus, despite the large amount of places, the world still seems a bit empty. This is because pedestrians are still in the experimental stage and there are no moving vehicles. So you can turn pedestrians on, even if they got a little in the way and we turned them off pretty quickly. A multiplayer feature could have filled the world a bit, but sadly this one is missing. Also, we regularly deal with your cheats not counting correctly for your challenges. The requested cheat was performed correctly, but will not count towards another attempt. Also, the instructions could have been a little clearer. For example, it’s not always clear where and how to perform certain tricks, which can lead to some frustration.

Aside from that, there are still some minor issues that require some attention, but thankfully they don’t spoil the gameplay. For example, it happened that we unexpectedly fell to the ground at different times, while there we did nothing wrong. This happened while I was quietly skating around, but also at the end of a railing. Finally, even the game is not the most beautiful to look at. Many places in the world are not as detailed and some textures seem somewhat low quality. Although we must mention that there is sometimes an eye for detail, as your table wears out, for example, when you use railings a lot. The game features two graphics modes, one with 4K resolution; a mode that runs at locked 60 fps and a frame rate focused mode up to 120 fps. While 120fps is good compared to lower graphics priority, where texture quality is sometimes slightly lower, we preferred 60fps, as that option offers the most balanced experience. Also in terms of audio it is a success. Grinding on a railing and performing a powerslide sounds very realistic and the soundtrack is quite ok, with songs from Rum Committee and Sherlock Bones.

Played on: PlayStation 5.
Also available on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, Nintendo Switch and PC.