That's such a daring but confident description of Session from the developer crea-ture Studios. Session is an insanely hard skateboarding game, in which you might have to eat dust again and again to master.
Here's the trailer of this beautiful game, but don't believe in it too much. All of the stunt moves in it are only possibles when you failed hundreds of times. Let's just watch it for admiration, and read our summary of Kotaku's review to understand how hard it is.
Session is the work from the hands of the veteran
The idea for Session started at the point two co-founders of crea-ture Studios met at Warner Bros. Games. They're Marc-Andre Houde and Vincent Da Silva, who totally have 35 years of developing video games.
Speaking for Kotaku's interview, the two said that the purpose of the game is to make people actually understand the passionate about skateboarding. It focuses not on the crazy stunts but on the progress, the hard work, tolerance, and determination. Learning how to play Session is just like learning how to skate in real-life.
Therefore, the game will not be easy to get used to, and you can already feel that through the "eat shit" part. In fact, Session is a hardcore skate sim, which will challenge all of your knowledge on controlling in video games. But that's the best part about this game, and you can find out what's so special about it in the following parts.
Session makes you forget about everything you are used to doing with sticks and directional pads
Session literally does the mentioned things. For normal cases of video games, you can control the movement of the characters with the left stick and the camera perspective with the right stick. The triggers' usage may vary, but most of the time, it's responsible for performing important actions. Although there are some special cases, those variations are not too different from that concept, and it will not surprise veteran gamers.
However, it's not the case for Session. The first time Kotaku's interviewer tried the game, he ate shit, as hard as your face hit the ground when you first time steps on a skateboard. To understand why, let's get deeper into this weird controlling mechanics of the game.
For your information, instead of controlling your whole body with just one stick, the game requires you to control each leg with a separate button. Specifically, the left stick is responsible for your left foot, and the right stick is for your right foot. To break, you use the B buttons on the Xbox controller, and use A for the pedal. The trigger is for the balance, as pressing the left trigger will make your character lean to the left, and vice versa.
Those are only the most basic controls in Session. However, it's just only equivalent for skating in a straight line without throwing your body to the ground. The writer said that it's very hard to get used to at first, as he kept using the joysticks to balance himself.
It's Dark Souls in the world of skate games
Fortunately, it doesn't take long to become familiar with this concept. Nevertheless, to pull off some amazing stunts like what you saw in the trailer requires ton loads of work to master. At this point, you can even call the game a Dark Souls among many skateboarding games.
But the rewards are very worth, as you can even understand how to perform those moves with your skateboard in real-life. To make it clear, the detailed control mechanics make you familiar with what to do with your body parts to make such stunt.
And as I've mentioned earlier, this game is not about winning, but about the feelings. In fact, there will be no score, no level-grinding, no abilities upgrade. The game focuses mainly on the experiences you have with your controller and your skateboard and your performance on the tricks. That's the most special things about Session, that's the feature that will attract a lot of players.
At this point, the co-founder of crea-ture Studio is proud to say that Session lives up to their expectation. Houde expressed that video games were very hard back in the days, but for now, it doesn't want to take the risk of challenging its player anymore. Session is not going to follow that same concept:
"So this is where we come back and say ‘we believe you can do this, and we also believe that no matter how hard it is, you’re going to have a blast when you land your stuff."
So if you are looking for a new challenge for your controlling prowess, you should play Session. Not only does it an extremely hard challenge, but it will also make you recall the excitement that you used to have the first time touching a controller.
It's not only about skating but it's also about recording
What's the fun performing crazy stunts with no one admiring? Session also agrees with this idea. As a result, it gives players a useful feature where you can just hit the menu button on your controller to open an editor for your footages.
In there, you can get through the whole stunning move of yours again, change the perspective, slow down the speed and even do some rewind. It's not going to be hard to control like Adobe Premiere or After Effects, and you can make epic films of you pulling off insane stunts to share with your friends.
However, Session is still under development, so their Early Access version is containing some flaws. For example, at this moment, there's no in-game music yet, and the developer is working on it. After all, choosing some edgy soundtracks for in-game experiences is not a simple task. Another example is that there are currently no accessories for you to customize your avatar. Lucky for us, through the announcement on its Kickstarter page, the game is receiving some board designs and clothes soon.
Release dates and supported platforms
All of those flaws might disappear when Sessions releases its final version. crea-ture Studio announced that the game will come out officially on September 17, which means it's only three- week away from us.
The game will be available for Xbox One and PC through Steam. But if you can't wait to step on the skateboard, you can purchase it the Early Access/Xbox Game Preview version right this moment.