Nieuws
Session: Skate Sim indulges the art of skateboarding
J
Jordan Oloman
But in Session, there are parameters to consider before your board even leaves the ground. The left and right sticks on your controller correspond to the left and right feet of your skater. So if you want to perform the most spartan of Ollies, you’ll have to pull back on the right stick to ready your stance and then send the left stick skywards to pop the board. And you better pray there’s some stable ground waiting for you when you come back down, or you’ll need a dental plan.
A Pop Shuvit requires you to gently move your right thumb counter-clockwise instead of holding it in place. Forget to pop, and you’ll be left with a Shuvit. Flick the right stick at a normal speed, as is customary, and you’ll do a Pop Shuvit 360. In another world, this might be beneficial, offering more points for the high score tally, perhaps. But in Session, skateboarding is not about numbers or supernatural set pieces—it’s about technique and creativity. The difference between two tricks can be masochistically subtle, like landing on a chasm’s ledge in Dark Souls, but that slight difference means absolutely everything.
This sim's incendiary difficulty assures you’ll paint the streets of New York with hundreds of heavy ragdolls before you manage your first triumphant grind. If you turn on "board breaking" under Wear and Tear settings, you can litter the place with maple wood, too. Even as an old hand in the genre, Session forced me to go back to the very basics of boarding and really earn my lines. But in doing so, it has given me a newfound appreciation for the simplest of maneuvers, as well as the profound joy of capturing them with its Jonzeian replay editor, complete with shaky keyframes and fisheye lenses.
It’s a humbling, hardcore simulator (the trick list comes with a playful caution about the "risk of frustration"), but its lack of training wheels leaves ample room for rewarding psychological battles. My white whale for an evening was a serpentine rail-to-manual combo on an overground bridge. But you’re bound to find your own mortal enemies, be they bollards or bike racks. Every park bench can be a boss battle in Session, and it speaks to the brutal truth of recreational skateboarding. I remember all the funny looks and scraped knees I endured on the way to my first suburban flip trick—and the mortifying redux when I tried again as an adult. But you persist with your rituals until they reward you, and Session is a digital testament to that.