The journey to mastery is one counted in years - or even decades.
Landing a kickflip while moving along?
Sure, today there are wildly more complex tricks out there, but it’s still a tremendous achievement.
It takes hours of investment and a deep resilience to failure to get there.
It’s not an achievement recompensed in any kind of currency like score.
Rather, to succeed is more than enough of a payoff.
The clue is in the name.
Developer creā-ture Studios has strived to deliver a skateboarding simulator.
To deconstruct what that means, the conversation inevitably starts with an iconic series.
Then, in 2007, EA Black Box debuted the beloved Skate, which at least alluded to simulation.
As such, like real skateboarding, it is a hard, frustrating, and deeply rewarding experience.
Frills are few and far between here.
You won’t even get a trick name displayed when you successfully land it.
In your first hour, you should start to hit kickflips on the flat.
Session’s unique play feel is delivered via a combination of its physics system and the controls.
Depending on your stance, one thumbstick represents the front foot, and the other the back foot.
Thrust the other foot forward, and an ollie begins.
Want to manual out of a trick?
Shift your weight appropriately over the deck.
Need to powerslide to a stop?
Push each foot out to the nose and tail of your deck, and the board responds accordingly.
Then there’s the way the game world’s physics shape what is possible.
Not so in Session, where there is no discernable help there.
Even with default configs, discovery defines the journey.
Real skateboarding is about exploring, and seeing urban terrain redefined through a playful new lens.
Session gets a lot right in translating that experience.
Visually, on the PS5 it is functional rather than striking or exciting.
But so much of the presentation is without flourish.
Meanwhile, the cast of other unvoiced skaters you do meet feel rather too hollow.
Session also makes some unusual choices in how it communicates the game to you.
A chain of missions take you through the game, introducing techniques and nudging you to new areas.
Again, here the comparison with recent years' wave of sombre train and trucking simulators bears up.
This is a game about realism over atmosphere or any attempt at vibrancy.
There are concessions to tone.
But don’t expect to plunge into the skateboarding lifestyle, or much in the way colourful.
Like real skateboarding, it rewards persistence.
Session is also something wonderful.
Persistence pays off, in what might be the extreme sport genre’s most distinct contribution yet.
