Session Skate Sim - Waterpark & Chris Cole

My first few hours with Session nearly ended in a rage-quit, and I say that as someone who has logged hundreds of hours in games that demand systems mastery. The dual-stick control scheme maps each analog stick to a foot, so your left foot pushes, your right foot pops, and suddenly every kickflip you thought you understood from other skating titles becomes foreign muscle memory you have to physically unlearn. That friction is not a design flaw. It is the entire point, and once it clicks, the satisfaction is unlike anything else in the genre. The Waterpark and Chris Cole DLC adds a map built around an abandoned waterpark, which is the first Session location set outside an urban environment. That change of scenery matters more than it sounds. Drained pools, curved concrete slides, and elevated platforms create line opportunities that flat city streets simply cannot. The DLC ships with seven new missions tied to pro skater Chris Cole, five deck designs, and six new items for the object dropper, the tool that lets you place obstacles anywhere on a map and build your own creative setups. For players who have already exhausted the base game's spots, this is a meaningful extension rather than cosmetic padding. Where Session earns its Very Positive rating on Steam is in its physics foundation. Each stick input produces a readable, physical consequence on the board: weight distribution, foot placement on the tail, whether you catch a flip trick with your front or back foot. Skating switch actually carries mechanical weight because your dominant foot configuration changes how inputs register. That level of granularity will alienate players looking for the arcade rush of Tony Hawk, and the game never apologizes for it. The tutorial is thin, several mechanics go unexplained in the mission log, and newcomers will likely spend their first session looking up how to manual before the game bothers to tell them. That is a legitimate complaint, and one the development team has never fully resolved. The broader picture on Session's development trajectory is worth knowing. A planned migration to Unreal Engine 5 was cancelled in late 2024, meaning the physics engine and visual presentation are now effectively final. The game looks functional rather than impressive, and the character customization remains limited despite multiple post-launch updates. Community sentiment reflects a split between dedicated skaters who find the simulation irreplaceable and casual players who bounce off immediately. The 83 percent positive Steam rating across more than 15,000 reviews tells you the committed audience is real and vocal, but it does not tell you about the players who left no review because the learning curve simply expelled them. For anyone willing to treat the controller like a physical skill to develop rather than a button sequence to memorize, the Waterpark DLC is a worthwhile addition to an already deep base game. Go in expecting to fall, a lot, and go in with a gamepad because keyboard input is not a serious option here.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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