Direct visual and gameplay comparison of the recently released "Skater XL" 1.0 and the current Early Access build of "Session" Review codes for both of these titles were provided by the developers. #SkaterXL #Session #Comparison
The sound during the manual phase, Session emits the sound of the wheels hitting each crack of the sidewalk but SkaterXL doesn't. I've been skateboarding for 20+ years and that sound is staple of the skateboarding community. Just hearing that sound makes me look around for skaters, just like smelling weed in the air makes you turn your head.
SkaterXL does this every crack sound, just the ground he picked exactly doesn’t have it which is shitty, but there is other types of tile that make the sound perfectly, just as your looking for homie
Your just desperate for any new skating game lol. We need a good sequel to Skate 3
3 года назад
Wtf opinions on this are all over the place. People either really hate it or really love it. I think I gotta grab it because my curiosity is killing me.
Both games would improve if they added animations for the character when he bails or slams. Kinda sucks how the game characters don't try to catch themselves when they fall or jump out of sketchy tricks rather than just lose all control of their nervous system and fall like a rag doll. I still enjoy both games though, at least I can kinda skate when the weather sucks!
The Session dev team have recently said that they’re going to be redoing the physics system in the game so development of other systems won’t continue until that’s completed.
Skater XL has better spots for people with a minimal relationship to real skateboarding. Session is better for real skaters imo. Having skated some of the spots in both games before, session did it better.
@@rjj4736 I'm worried about Session though. I mean financially. If you're a game dev it's not neccessarily a good idea to target a group of people that would rather spend their free time skating. Only time will tell though.
Rocco lol that’s your comeback, this is about how create-ure studios has less people working on their game. Not saying skaterxl is bad. To me session is more challenging thats what I like (more realistic)
Me personally, I think session and skater xl should collaborate on a fusion title. Skater xl being ahead in release and session being ahead in visual modeling. I've also been waiting on a full on map creation option for awhile.
This takes me back to the EA skate demo that was available in August of 2007 before the retail version was released. I just remember being fucking speechless at how realistic it was. The physics in the game engine was just unparalleled coming from a THPS game. I see this video now and it’s disappointing to see that, even 13 years later, skateboarding games have made barely an improvement over the original game that revolutionized the genre over a decade ago. With that being said, knowing the ambiguous and free form nature of real life skateboarding, I could understand that creating a game like this is a colossal undertaking and undoubtedly a programming nightmare, so kudos to the developers for making any headway they possibly can. I guess it’s a testament to the original Skate, that game really was way ahead of its time.
XL is a vast improvement from Skate. The fact that Skate & Session use animations for their tricks put XL in a completely different league. Games vs Simulator.
These games are a huge upgrade from skate. Weirdly, the game looks very bad when you watch gameplay but once you play it you understand the hype surrounding the release. If you skate in real life these games feel amazing
Snail Cage XL still use keyframe animations for its tricks. The only difference is that it has complex physics applied to them so you can sort of control the weight. Without animations it’d be just like a ragdoll board
Ruok It basically is a rag doll board. They just scripted rules that prevent it from getting too far away from the character. They have a video on their channel about how they did the motion capture and how they did it. But it isn’t animations in a sense where they motion capture someone doing a kick flip and process it in Blender or something like that and then have it coded where that animation plays while the board is flipping 360 degrees. They motion captured hundreds of kickflips, cut each one into a thousand pieces, and scripted it to where the way that you do the trick determines how those pieces of the kickflip are combined, while the board spins freely underneath you. Other games literally just have the character play a pre-made animation while the board flips the same way it always does.
Session is still in very early development. It looks like they are focusing a lot on details but I'm so stoked to see what they come up with. (This is coming from someone who has 100hrs on Skater XL and 50 on Session)
but session is also LONGER in development. SKATER XL came outta nowhere. I know there was a mobilegame called "skater" but they came with 1 video and released it
Theyre working with unreal engine, ofc its gonna be longer. SkaterXL didnt come out of no where, its a mobile game port. Literaly just reworked with some new models. Thats why it feels so floaty and arcady. Which is fine its good to have two different games.
@@migueeeelet everytime you do the same trick in skater xl, it's gonna look different. You can catch a kickflip with your front foot, back foot, both foot, tweak it to the left, flip it slow or fast etc etc. Theres no canned animation for tricks
@@CrazyShaolinWarrior it's the same in session as long as you set your gameplay settings that way. Session's gameplay is far more in depth, realistic, and customizable. Skater XL literally became too easy and boring after just a week of playing
The person doing this review hasn't realised you can push faster by tapping A or X in Session, then went on to complain that it's too slow. As for the impact of landing, are you kidding me? In skater xl you can literally land from any height no problem. Session is far more realistic in that aspect and even has a feature you can enable that requires an input when landing from height to avoid bailing.
I've played both a bunch, but enjoyed Session a lot more in the end. I feel like Skater XL is a good game if you want to have this "realistic" kind of approach, but would still like to quickly feel like an amazing skater - supported in the game by the ridiculous amount of handholding for doing/landing tricks, including basic things such as jump height etc.; and Sessions is the better choice if you don't need things to be as flashy, but would like to have the skating experience (minus breaking your bones irl), getting to land cool (but considerably less flashy) tricks after putting some effort into learning how they work. Skater XL might be more "intuitive" in the end, but I feel like the complexity Sessions brings is in the game for a good reason, since the control scheme links a lot more to what you'd do when skating (with the thumb sticks linked to your respective feet) - but I can see someone go for either game depending on what they're looking for.
I feel the exact opposite. I found SkaterXL to be more realistic because of how you can tweak your tricks. You can do them slow, quick, catch with front foot or back foot.. do a shifty if you want. Do an ollie where you actually jump up yourself so you just hippie ollie. There's way more control given in SkaterXL and it's still complex. Like doing a varial flip shifty can be super hard especially once you've done tre flips, which reminds me of how it is IRL.
Their target audience are skaters and simmers. What they care about is how good the simulation and controls feels. Everything else makes no difference, specially with mod support.
This was an amazing comparison video please do another soon or in the future when both games get updated further. A couple major things you forgot to mention that you could've mentioned: The Switch Stance How each trick looks Bails Skybox Trick Complexity P.S. I am more of a fan of Session even after Skater XL's full launch, I am still hopeful for both games in the future. Session feels more like skateboarding to me as I do skateboard in real life and have for the last 16 years.
Alex I love session as well, I just feel like it’s a little bit robotic or stiff, especially on the grinds. Haven’t played in a while but I think creature said something about updating its gameplay and I do sure hope it comes soon
@@dranradan5076 I get it and get your point on mixing them. However I prefer the inmersive experience of moving the caracter rather than a landmark, manual catch, the size of the assets is more realistic, and foot work seems more real. I own both and would put XL grinds, maps and replay editor into session. Regarding stiffness and horror faces they are both the worst, cripie xd.
Comparison from my point of view: Session: 1) Still in Early Access 2) Few glitches 3) You hit a curb, you'll fly 10 meters away 4) Customization just ok unless you have a mod 5) Gameplay is much harder than Skater XL but 6) Flip tricks more cleaner than Skater XL 7) Does have late Flips 8) Unreal Engine Skater XL: 1) Full released 2) More bigger map 3) This game community is awesome 4) Mods 5) Customization is really good 6) Gameplay more friendlier but 7) Full released but still few glitches 8) Flip tricks still sloppy 9) No late flips yet
2 things to note, session has been in development for longer than SkaterXL. And a lot of the reason Session looks better is due to a lot of purchased asset packed.
Nice comparison, though considering you had issues with speed with the ramps is likely due you didn't seem to know that pushing in Session had a gta mechanic. Where if you rapidly tap the push button you get up to a faster maximum speed. It will help you getting air time a lot better. Also I feel the object dropper should have been mentioned during the map comparison part since it allows you to place down new ramps/rails and other objects to turn locations into good skate spots. Hell, you can even reach higher locations with it if you stack them up like a staircase, haha. Can't wait to see your 1.0 Session vs SkaterXL vid in the future though. Your comparisons are awesome!
So far I enjoy Skater XL's animations, map layout, and the flip tricks (even though the gravity is fucked), while on Session I do enjoy the way it looks and the sound design. After my experience in skating I would say as far as everything goes Session is a little more realistic, but Skater XL is just as fun. I don't think I could fully pick between the two.
Actually i really enjoy session's world design, it feels more authentic when you live in a little city with no skateparks or skate spots, where you have to create your own spots and even a little curb can be something fun to skate on
For anyone on the fence about buying Skater XL on consoles, I'd really suggest holding off for now. It's incredibly buggy with some frame rate issues and a surprisingly small amount of content. You really have to make your own fun for now, but at £35 and with a lot of core features missing I'd say it's not easy to do. Also for anyone who cares, it also has a trophy that is seemingly impossible asking you to skate over 40,000 kilometres. I bought it because I love the skating genre and I want to support small studios. But unless there is a roadmap of extra content coming for free down the road I find it hard not to feel a little ripped off right now.
I kinda feel bad for Session. They have been in early access for so long and now Skater XL comes along and will most likely take whatever market share they initially had.
I don´t, I just feel like Skater XL is so rushed where as Session hasn´t shown all it has offer yet, I would take the Session simulator simly because it seems to go deeper in those fine details that this gentleman just pointed out.
@@warpig2786 i feel so many of the people who favor XL are not experienced skaters. i love how buggy session is, because nothing like hitting an edge in a grind. it happens. to every skateboarder to ever try to grind. oh, you thought that 5-0 was great, nope, you hit an edge. or didnt balance right ,and you eat shit. having to control the front foot to ollie only makes sense. and session is WAY more rewarding when you finish a trick. the more i play XL the more i realize how bad it is. also, watching footage of people do some legit THPS stuff in XL already just like they did with the skate games. oh, you wanna 360 nose blunt to 360 hard flip manual too tripple kick flip blunt slide down a rail to a manual to you know. endlessly combo. without mods i feel Session is way better. but people dont realize session has mods too. even i havent done modded session yet.
MattEye that’s usually what happens when an indie developer takes on a huge challenge of creating a game from scratch. Another developer sees the weaknesses in their game and tweaks them and release a better product. Take BMX streets and BMX the game for example.
Skater XL uses physics to make the board flip, whereas session uses actual animations. This is the reason the movements on session look more “ robotic “
Damn, I have SkaterXL and they officially released 1.0 over all consoles, and I have to say, I was pretty underwhelmed. I love the mechanics, but there is still tons of bugs fixed and overlooked features that are totally needed. Thinking that Session might have been better.
I feel like session if you can get really good with extreme real settings like board catching and manual spin and scoop speed inputs is gonna be so rewarding to get good at.
Its awesome to even have these kind of options along with THPS 1+2 remastered coming out next month and Skate 4 announced this year. Awesome to see skate games make a big return!
Great video, but I just wanna say you should've mentioned the realistic-leaning EA's Skate more instead of the arcadey THPS, because Session and XL are more akin to EA's, making it more fitting to be compared to.
I’d love to see this video revisited now that both games have gotten some updates. Session is a totally new experience after its latest update and XL has gotten some entry level mod support.
I tried out Session just now (Aug. 1, 2022) and it doesn't seem to be in much different of a state than shown in this video. Just letting anyone know who happens to read this and is curious as to the state of that game.
@Drew Biggah Gonna be honest, Skate doesn't take much skill, neither does Session if you know Skateboarding, it's the same controls as Skater XL, it's just really sluggish right now
@Drew Biggah Skater XL might feel more "casual" to you because the controls are actually intuitive and smooth unlike Session's controls, which are very sluggish, clunky and not fun to play.
excellent topic and video. as a life long skater, XL has been amazing over the last 18 months (and it's coming to switch, at 60fps apparently). XL is like learning a string puppet. i'm not so keen on session...
I'm also a skater but I personally prefer Session over SkaterXL (both are fantastic imo), but I'm curious what about Session are you not so keen on? For me, Session's controls are slightly more true to life which is why I prefer Session.
Drummaniac17 also for me with session doing grinds and all that feels more akin to Tony Hawk, since you actually have to do the motion with the stick in order to even get into the grind, whereas in skater xl you just land on the rail like ea skate
hey this was a great vid for the time, but is there a clear winner now that it's a year later? i just started looking into these two games tonight really this is the second vid i saw so anyone wanna save me allot of watching and reading if one is dead let me know
The issue with session is that it doesn't use physics, it tries to emulate physics but it's all animations based. Skater XL is not animations based it's physics based just like the skate games. So while session might look prettier the whole point is gameplay and session really lacks. Say what you want about realism but a game has to be fun first, and skater XL achieves that while still being very realistic. I don't see session ever having better gameplay because of their animation lock on type system. It's just not really fun. I bought session and had a horrible time, I skate in real life, am a master at gaming owning over 400 and grew up with Tony hawk and skate and man session just leaves too much to be desired. With skater XL I was doing awesome lines in no time, the modding support is so much superior and the community keeps making amazing maps, what more is there to say. Physics based skateboarding games win every time.
u can keep hoping and wishing that session will look better in the future... by the time skate 4 comes out session will be forgotten...SXL on the other hand need to hurry up & implement mods and community maps for console... they should even make DawgvinciXXL / babbo / sound mod standard inbuilt features of the game...
Session looks and sounds better, SXL plays better. Session's animations look stiff, SXL's animations are fluid. Session has an object dropper, SXL has the clearly better replay editor. They both need more customization options (including a way for players to import textures for custom clothes and boards), they both need to clean up their transition physics and add a way to "pump" to pick up speed. I like Skater XL better because it's more intuitive, It has the better replay editor for making film clips, and the board physics feel nice. In all honesty, if Session's controls were a *little* less complex, and it had better controls in the replay editor, I would make the switch, because being able to control the time of day and drop in objects is essential for better skate films.
Was getting pretty burned out on Skater XL on my PS4 and realized last time my kids were over I was having more fun playing Skate 3 on their Series S so I was delighted this morning to see Session deluxe edition for half off on the PS4, it's downloading rn can't wait to try it out.
I started with Session a while ago in early access and only just got Skater XL before the full release. I enjoy Skater XL just a little more. Feels more fluid, if that makes sense.
@W J Yeah, it's not about difficulties. It's about the FEEL of the game. Session is super clunky and strange feeling. SXL is super smooth and fluid. Very pretty animations.
skater xl better animations the way the character flows, it just looks like jump cuts half the time in session with no real smooth transition between character movement and trick movement. Also session looks better because your comparing unreal engine 4 to unity, there can be some great looking graphics come out of untiy but its no way up to par with unreal
No the graphics are worse because the game is getting a release on consoles including Switch, look at Escape from Tarkov, in my opinion it looks better than any Unreal game (because of the smooth look of unreal) if you search for Escape from Tarkov be sure to watch a video from the devs (battlestate) because you can set your own color grading and sharpness (a lot of people use this to get a better vision at the enemy, thats why im saying)
@@maximilianschaffler9981 We are comparing these two games, which both are on consoles, so I dont see the point you are trying to make? Sessions clearly looks better graphicly. Skater xl looks better in some animations. Both need work but even though I like skater xl better I just don't see it being graphicly better than sessions ever, and I'm okay with that. Always been gameplay over graphics, even though I ditched consoles and moved to pc to be a graphics whore.
nice video man but can you redo the video with the new updates n stuff that has been happening too ? session is leaving skaterxl in the dust if you asked me
Skater XL has been my go to, I like the feel of it. I'm excited for some bigger maps over time. Only thing I really don't like about the game is when you fall you can't just get back up and start skating. It sends you back to the spawn point.
@@borf1042 it says directly on the thumbnail in the library pre release. Aswell when you open the game the first screen is a huge statement stating its pre release. XL is sold on a hardcopy.
I like both. Sessions day & night mode is amazing & the lo-fi chillhop station is so mellow to skate to at 7am. I'm very thankful to have 2 new skate games & THPS 1+2 coming up so that makes 3. It beats playing EA skate 3, I got burnt out on that game. But I do go back to the original EA skate on x-box one.
It’s naturally easier, that’s why you enjoy it more. The fact that riding fakie or switch in Session is as difficult as riding switch in person (without practice). Session is more realistic. Even though the physics are different between games.
What are you even talking about with the ollie from session. the view is behind where he is rollling and you press down with the right and up with the left joystick. Where is the 90 degrees the controls are rotated at?
you forgot to mention many detailed control features in skater xl. For example, you can make the tricks look more real. You can do manual and wiggle with the character with the other joystick. Furthermore, you can do one trick 10 and it is always a bit different, so you can add your style to the game. I play both games, but I prefer skater xl because it gives you more freedom.
Like you said, they both need tons of work. I've played a lot of SkaterXL, and I have really grown to enjoy its controls, even over Skate, but I need more challenges, objectives, etc. I can't imagine any casual player getting into either game for very long.
if you can get skater XL for like $30 then go for it. it’s much more polished than session atm but really not worth the $40 they’re asking imo. might be when/if they add more features like multiplayer.
Back in I think summer of 2020 I had the free trial of session but apparently the grinding seemed to be broken and I even double checked to see if the option for easy/auto grind was on which it was but then I remember one time I found a very good grind spot but I kept on bailing because like I just said it was broken but I did a bit of a good grind and I remember looking at the replay of that because who knows when it would happen again 😂
@@owenshu9443 Yeah its way better without that kind of fluff. I put 24 hours of playtime into this game faster than anything else I've picked up in a long time. 30 hours in and it just gets better as you go, just like real life
I never really noticed it, but Skater XL grind sound is nearly identically to the older THPS games. Personally, I was a fan of Session more than Skater XL mostly because it allowed me to mimic the Skate button mapping with the Legacy option. But, Skater XL feels a lot more polished to me at this point. I can at least do smith grinds in Skater XL. One thing I'd like to see added to Skater XL is a "bonk" type feature. They have the various powerslide methods, but if I could flick both sticks up or down after doing an ollie, this "bonk" feature would make things look a lot smoother than a perfectly timed "nose manual".
i have tony hawk and skater xl, if you want the nostalgia, then get tony hawk. but if you like the game to be more realistic and challenging, then skater xl is actually pretty good, especially if you play on pc so you have access to the mods
Skater xl forever man. The fact that every trick looks different because it’s physics based is everything. And if you can mod it, it’s the best skateboarding simulator ever hands down. I’m not bashing session though, because everyone has their own opinion
Session also seems really choppy and stiffly animated too. Like don’t get me wrong I might end up buying it anyway, but Skater XL just seems more smooth.
I know these games are made on tiny budgets by a small indie team, and hopefully they can improve their games where it counts. One thing I didn't see you mention was how in Skater XL you spin in the air super fast, like in a THPS game. That comes across as out of place for a simulation game to me. Thanks for making this video, if for no other reason than to reinforce the reasons why I love the THPS series so much. Pure fun, no bullshit.
After 20 hours of game time on SXL, I love being able to control all my tricks and transitions with only the analogs. It’s rather intuitive. -edit- SXL with mods is a superior game.
I enjoy Skater XL but one thing I can't stand is if I choose regular stance it should stay in regular stance but sometimes it will switch to goofy if I'm going back down a ramp and then I have to jump and turn to go back to regular because the goofy controls are mess up unless I choose goofy stance in the settings.
