As the Dark Souls series and other FromSoft games have risen to prominence, so too has the discussion around difficulty in video games. But the games that drive that conversation are usually seen as difficult but fair by virtue of their design and mechanical balancing. While the developers at Crea-ture Studios are undoubtedly extremely passionate and sought to set a new bar for realism in the skateboarding genre with Session: Skate Sim, what seems to have been forgotten was that at their core, games are meant to be fun.

It seems that when Crea-ture Studios was presented with a choice between realism and fun, the studio chose the former. In no single area did the devs lean harder into that commitment to realism than in the level of control granted the player. Between the analog sticks, the face buttons, and the triggers, the player has an unprecedented level of control over their in-game character's feet, specifically. But that control also means that the player is asked to manage even the most minute movements in Session.

At the default difficulty, Session offers very little assistance to the player to facilitate a smoother, more enjoyable experience. The actions performed by the player from the execution of the controls to the timing of inputs are exactly what is translated on screen in a completely unforgiving manner. While the lack of assistance makes sense for a simulation game trying to deliver a faithful experience, that realism makes even the simplest tasks tedious. Session's mission tricks and objectives are well-thought-out and definitely demand a lot from the player, but when one trick or set of tricks takes more than an hour to land, the entire experience starts to drag.

Early in the tutorial, the control scheme feels new and exciting, but as things continue to get more complex even skating in a straight line or ollie-ing up onto a curb becomes daunting and difficult. The moment at which Crea-ture chose to assign the back foot to the left stick and the front foot to the right seems to be when it lost any connection to intuitive control mapping. Not only is each foot represented individually by each analog stick but even something as simple as pushing is overdesigned, with the back foot and front foot pushes being assigned to square and cross, respectively. As if to make things even more complicated, the controls aren't assigned to whichever foot is the back foot or front foot at any given time. Instead, the controls are assigned to the back foot and front foot as they would be when standing in either the regular or goofy stance chosen by the player at the outset of the game. So when skating switch (with the "front" foot in the "back"), the stick that controls the back foot suddenly controls the front foot.

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Athletes rely on muscle memory from years of practice to excel at their respective sports, but the muscle memory of skateboarding is impossible to map to a controller. As a result, what Crea-ture is asking of its audience is to learn something entirely new and grind through the dozens of hours to develop muscle memory for their control scheme. And Crea-ture was clearly aware of this, as it built in the option to get off the board and run. A game in which something as simple as traversing to the actual mission or objective requires literal practice is destined to lose all but the most committed players.

Despite being extremely frustrating, the game gets at least a few things right. The writing in the story mode is extremely clever. Through text-based dialogue, the game is able to provide backstory for the player character explaining both why they are already familiar with the basic mechanics of skating and seemingly highly respected in the community. Mention of an injury more than ten years prior to the beginning of the game is used to build an entirely believable premise for why the player character learns more quickly than anyone possibly could in real life. And the way the game chooses to break the fourth wall is both perfectly timed and never overused. The characters, objectives, and set dressing all look and feel like they were ripped right out of a real-world, modern-day skate park. Wonderful details like the semi-retro VHS style interface and the fisheye lens presentation in photo mode are all evidence that the developers at Crea-ture are, at their core, skaters.

Beyond the gameplay and controls, Session still has issues that add up to a game that is simply unfinished and not ready for prime time. Graphically the game's appearance is inconsistent. The open world doesn’t have any traffic or NPC's aside from the other skaters standing in place waiting to give the player mission objectives. Faces look like clay and are completely devoid of any sign of emotion, there is no hair physics to speak of, and the on-foot animations effectively put every issue with the character models under the microscope.

Objectives themselves are well-designed and enjoyable to perform, but that’s when those objective lists are readily available. At the outset of each mission, the game provides a list of objectives, but afterward, that list is only available when the player completes one of the tricks on the list. However, the game's detection system for determining that the trick has been completed is so inconsistent that even when performed perfectly, whether it counts is entirely luck of the draw. There is no insight or feedback provided by the game about what the player might be doing wrong.

And finally, Session suffers from a simple lack of polish. The emptiness of the world, unclear communication, and even difficulty picking up the skateboard all add up to a game that seems unfinished. On top of the lack of polish, there are several bugs that will plague any playthrough. Hit detection bugs are the most common but other imperfections make an already extremely difficult and frustrating experience even more so.

Session: Skate Sim is a skate simulation that was very clearly designed with skaters in mind. From the extremely involved control scheme to the perfectly captured recreation of skate culture, the game seems like it was never intended to be a gateway for non-skaters to get into the sport. But the bugs, difficulty, general lack of fun, and incomplete state of the game make it difficult to recommend Session to its target audience as well. Some gamers may be able to break through the learning curve and appreciate the thoroughness put into creating such an involved skate sim, but at the end of the day, it's simply not fun.

Session: Skate Sim releases on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch on September 22, 2022. Game Rant was provided a PlayStation 5 code for this review.