SESSION: Skate Sim is an upcoming skateboarding video game developed by Crea-ture Studios and is published by Nacon. If you’re feeling the nostalgic itch to travel back in time to the 90s when street skating ruled the world, this is the game for you. While SESSION: Skate Sim is already able to deliver an authentic skating experience in this preview, there are a few worrisome elements that you should be aware of.
The game first throws you into a fairly lengthy tutorial that gives you a good rundown of the controls, tricks, objectives, etc. For someone who’s a bit of a novice when it comes to skating games, it was challenging to adapt to the default camera perspective and the control scheme that the game had, so I recommend exploring the settings and changing them to match your playstyle. The tutorial could also be a bit unclear at times as to what actions you needed to perform to move forward, specifically when it came to the grinding part. While it’s fair to say that this was due to my lack of skill, I still felt the game could have done a better job of explaining things to prevent alienating newer players. Once that is completed, you are then thrown into one of the four world maps and are free to skate to your heart’s content. The landscapes all vary and give you limitless possibilities in pulling off different tricks, making them all amazing skating paradises.
Along with the freedom of exploring, there are also different mission objectives that will have you perform a specific trick (or series of tricks) to complete them. If done so correctly, you’ll be rewarded with some cash and EXP. These are nice little distractions if you tire of skating around the map, however, right now these missions are limited and don’t offer many variations besides some quirky dialogue from a sassy skating instructor. It will be interesting to see where Crea-ture Studios ends up taking this feature and if they’ll end up attaching a narrative of some kind to them in the final product.
One aspect that the preview didn’t hold back on is the multitude of ways in which to implement customization. Right now, there are a lot of different options on ways to make your characters’ clothes and your skateboard skin stand out with a variety of eye-catching colors and unique designs. However, like in real life, if you want something, it’ll cost you. Therefore, I recommend doing those objectives for those of you who want that cool hat or fiery skin. Hopefully, in the final product, there will be a lot more customization options to work with because this feature will be important when multiplayer comes around.
Since this is a preview, it’s unsurprising that it comes with its fair share of flaws that could use some attention before delivering the final version. For starters, Crea-ture Studios put a lot of time and effort into creating these open worlds for the player, yet I still feel like more can be done to give it more life. The best way to fix this issue is by including random bystanders, moving cars, or perhaps animals just to give it that feeling of authenticity. In the preview version, it just feels a bit too empty, which can take out the excitement factor of skating in a vast landscape.
Secondly, the controls are really hard to get used to. As I mentioned before when going over the tutorial, it’ll take some effort to adjust them in the settings to get a good feel of it, but even so, SESSION: Skate Sim doesn’t make it easy. While it’s understandable that they want to deliver a realistic feeling to skating and stand out from the Tony Hawk games, it brings a challenging experience that seems completely unnecessary at times. Then, there are the technical issues, one of them being when there’s a minor obstacle like a small incline from the sidewalk, it will put you at a full stop even though you could easily skate over it.
Though it has its faults, SESSION: Skate Sim should be admired for what it’s attempting to accomplish in the game’s genre. It also benefits from nice character models, sharp skating animations, and music that is very reminiscent of that high-energy 90s feel. Crea-ture Studios has created a wonderful open canvas for their upcoming realistic skating simulation game that has a lot of potentials, which I hope they can utilize. Even so, it’s worth downloading yourself just to pull off Ollies and Kickflips in your spare time.
Session: Skate Sim is available on Steam Early Access, Xbox, and Epic Games.
For more information, follow creā-ture on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Related: SESSION: Skate Sim Biggest Update Featured in New Video
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I've loved playing video games ever since I first played Battletoads on the NES when I was a kid. Since then, I've played a wide variety of games on different systems, including Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and have mostly gravitated towards open-world RPGs and action-adventure games with amazing storylines and character arcs. I'm passionate when comes to writing and interested in working as a narrative designer.
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