Session: Skate Sim could never quite capture my heart the way Skate did. And Skater XL has filled the niche for me in Skate‘s absence (although a Skate revival is at hand).
I saw the value offered by Sessions: Skate Sim, but I just could not wrap my head around the less-than-intuitive approach to player control. In Skate, you would use the left analog stick to steer; flicking and rotating the right analog stick would cause you to bust tricks.
Skater XL changed this up slightly by having the left analog stick steer your character if you pressed left and right, but up and down would, in conjunction with the right analog stick, control your feet so you could bust tricks. It took a little getting used to, but I preferred that option to using the analog sticks solely for feet placements and tricking, with the right and left bumper used for steering.
This is the main mode of input for Session as well. That was, until crea-ture Studios introduced what it called ‘Legacy’ (or Skate 3) controls, which effectively emulated the Skate approach to controlling your avatar.
Finally, the hurdle of simply being able to instinctively navigate Session‘s play areas without constantly bumping into things and crumpling like a cheap suit had been side-stepped. Unfortunately, the game was still really early in its build, so I eventually fell off the hype train, but I always kept Session in the back of my mind for when it finally released with more polish and content.
So when it was announced that Session was leaving early access and officially launching, with a PS5 version to boot (it had previously only be in Early Access on Steam and Xbox consoles), it felt like the time had finally arrived to dive deep and see what Session had to offer. More importantly, I was curious if it could match — if not surpass — the level of enjoyment I got from Skater XL. But Session had fallen so far off of my radar that I missed a blog update from May 30, 2022, where the developer stated that Legacy controls had been unceremoniously removed from the game; basically, “Frick you, come again.”
So you could imagine my surprise and genuine confusion when I downloaded my Steam copy in order to glean some cubes and shred some tubes, only to feverishly search through the options menu trying to find the Legacy control toggle and only seeing two non-Legacy control options.
Basically, it’s either back to the default controls, or the somewhat-more-intuitive left analog stick for the front foot and right for the back, regardless of stance, which will more than likely be my new preferred input method. But both require using those pesky triggers.
This is a pretty big bummer for me, since I still struggle with the default control method. Spending a ton of time simply getting past that obstacle feels like a tall ask. And that’s to say nothing for the amount of time still required to learn tricks and land them cleanly on top of that. I can’t be the only one. But I guess the only recourse I have, to quote the derisive missive, is to “get gud.” I’m actually surprised more people haven’t been making hay over this, but maybe the Legacy control option was far less-utilized than I give it credit for.
Hopefully this will be less of a final goodbye for Legacy controls in Session, and more of a “See you later,” should crea-ture Studios decide to grace us with its inclusion down the road. If it is the final goodbye, though, know that it shall be sorely missed by at least one player.
I’m with you, legacy controls should be brought back. I really hope it does.