When games get announced, often it is the case that the basic concept far outreached the net result and sometimes the finished product is a little underwhelming, regardless of the developer's passion and aptitude.

Session is the brainchild of Creature Studios, a company of clear talent and exquisite vision to "tame the lame" who offer unique and rather niche experiences, but where the game offers artistic styling and what some may consider versatility and originality in droves, it simply lacks any of the core pillars expected of a "game" to make it, well, an enjoyable experience and not just an unyielding simulation.

To be fair, Session is, at its core, a sports simulation, which is not necessarily a "game". It's more of an opportunity to engage from the viewpoint of a skater, in a free-skating situation, whilst adhering to the move-set, parameters, and restrictions within the sandbox environment to perform tasks for the enjoyment of yourself.

I have to admit I was heavily drawn to this title because of its highly chilled "experience" nature, the low-slung camera angle a massive slew of customisations for your board to get the feeling of your deck dialed in, the character creation tool with a massive range of around 200 garments, and a superb map featuring tons of skate spots and some very lush looking locales. Ultimately, however, it very quickly becomes apparent that you yearn for more, as there isn't a heck of a lot going on in this sandbox: it's too shilled, too tame, and a little lame.

It's you and your board with a variety of moves to discover, and sadly that's about the long and the short of it. Given that there are no score counters, very little dynamic background action in the environments and no multiplayer modes, I cannot help but feel that Session is more of a proof-of-concept demonstration of what could be, rather than a fully fleshed-out title that deserves its self-imposed £50 price tag.

Having grown up on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the original PlayStation console back in the 90's, my muscle memory consistently brings me to that control system, regardless of how long it's been. Playing games like Skate back in 2007 shook this and gave me a renewed way to play with the rather fun but difficult-to-master "flick" controls.

Session changes this up yet again with a third option to commit to memory, with turning bound to the L2 and R2 buttons, crouching, jumping, and weight balancing on the analogue sticks, and triangle picks up your board letting you run amok like you just don't care.

Performing moves in Session requires practice, lots of practice, because quite simply: they are the most finicky and possibly the most realistic I have ever witnessed in a skating game.

Crea-ture knows what they're doing, not a doubt in my mind, it's masterful engineering of tried and tested inputs to even attempt to reinvent the wheel the way they want to roll it, but honestly, it's incredibly hard to perform even the most basic of tasks. I did notice that some PC players managed to use a Legacy set of controls to play the game a-la-Skate in early access builds, however, I could not find this load out on the PS4/5 versions even going through the experimental features.

An example of the difficulty of a move can be seen really early on with the common "manual". To perform a manual in any other game it requires simply a down/up movement in some shape or form for a rear manual or vice versa for a nose manual. Not in Session.

Here you have to gently press down on the right stick to shift your balance over the rear trucks then while moving (by tapping the Cross or Square buttons) and eventually jumping (which requires a downward input on the right stick followed by an upward input on the left stick) you have to master the variable degrees of movement within your analogue sticks and ever so gently put pressure on those trucks with the right stick as you land, which is insanely tricky.

Spinning and turning is a huge bone of contention I have with the existing default controls, as you can either have them set to turn faster based on the pressure put on those buttons pre-popping the move, during the move or how fast the buttons were pressed pre or post popping the move.

It's clever stuff and I can see where it comes from and how it could potentially become a killer controller configuration, but years of hammering THPS in all of its various iterations has battle-hardened me into a veteran for the simpler less-intricate control system we all know and love; left analogue stick movement.

To say that THPS or Skate has the perfect control system would be bending the truth, but those at least have the benefit of feeling more natural and flowing more easily from my fingers than the way Session chooses to force you to relearn every controller trope that has ingrained itself deep into our psyches for the last 20+ years.

That's fine if that's what you're expecting from this title; but if not, then heed this, expect it, and you'll be better off!

As mentioned before there are experimental features squirreled away in this game, and lots of them. One of the more interesting is that of adding in pedestrians as for whatever reason the game chooses to load absolutely none as default, barring your direction and objective-giving NPCs.

When you approach the environments you quickly realise just how barren and lifeless they really are, which is ironically probably prime for the ideal skate sesh, but it's not exciting or realistic, and really ramps up a weird feeling of seclusion I felt in this game. Pre-pandemic this probably would have been incredibly bizarre to have an open world populated by zero pedestrians, but the lack of motion and organic life in Session is pretty depressing in all honesty.

There is no traffic, no wildlife, and no interactive vibrancy to be seen throughout. Even when you are tasked to go meet people at various locations there is little going on. For example, visiting the No-Comply skate shop sounds like it's going to be a blast, surely a hub for fellow skaters?!

Nope, just like the streets, it's devoid of any patrons, there are no other skaters in this world, and the store has just one NPC to blandly harass for some new wheels or a hoodie or whatever.

Session needs an injection of randomness, perhaps even implementing other skaters' ghosts flying around the environmental hot spots to inspire and give you some further direction, something to intrigue and impress you, but Session definitely lacks atmosphere and energy from all I have played of it.

I found myself falling over a lot in Session, and the ragdoll physics are hilarious, but only for so long before you get ground down by repeatedly falling over a stray piece of litter on the floor or a millimetre-too-tall piece of geometry that inexplicably interferes with your wheels.

Initially, I was pulling some huge jumps looking for gaps, and howling at the fails, but contrarily, I entered an underground car park and random things kept flinging me off my board while I was simply cruising around looking for the next spot to attack. By this point, the mildly amusing bails became annoyingly regular physics fails.

It's not all doom and gloom, as the locations are visually superb, but I had some really crappy moments where I simply teleported out to another place to avoid further frustration with what should have been non-trip-hazards.

Session is a very unique skating title, but unfortunately, games like Tony Hawks and Skate are more appealing purely because they contain the elements Session is NOT concentrating on which therefore would have ironically built a more compelling and competitive experience. I personally lost interest in this game quite quickly and unfortunately, I did not find the impetus to go back to it much at all.

I would have loved a better sense of progression and reward, and though I got quite a few trophies along the way I didn't feel ultra-invested in Session the way I have done with Skate games in the past.

I could hope that the devs add back in more modes, give us multiplayer, grant us an optional scoring system, and just please allow us to have a few more traditional elements. This would let the seasoned gamers transition more smoothly from the old tropes to the newer ideas expressed in Session with more gusto and intrigue. It doesn't have to pile on fully arcade-like pandemonium as we would see it in a Tony Hawk title, but it also shouldn't feel so sanitized and unrealistically realistic, if that makes sense.

I ultimately feel that this is a missed opportunity to straddle the lines and grab a bigger fanbase, but I get that the devs wanted to stay true to their original visions, so I'm torn as to what they should have done versus what they did being a better decision for this IP.

Perhaps a sequel will build on this innovative base, satiate these feelings, and bring us the definitive ultimate all-around skateboarding experience in the future.