Released in early 2000, Grind Session pre-dates Tony Hawk 2, and in my opinion, blows Tony Hawk 1 out of the water. Unfortunately, despite starting development before Pro Skater, it was labeled as a rip off, and went unnoticed at the time.
That’s a shame, because this game has a lot of innovative ideas that I would have loved to see explored in a sequel.
Let’s take a look.
The first thing you’ll notice about the game is Daewon Song! It’s awesome to see him in a PS1 game. He doesn’t reappear in a video game until American Wasteland, 5 years later.
Having Daewon featured in the game might have been a bad business choice though. Despite being huge in the skateboarding world, he wasn’t a household name like X-Games stars Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, or even Andy MacDonald. They put a Van’s Triple Crown logo on the cover, but that didn’t give it nearly as much respectability as its competitors. And the over-produced nose blunt image on the cover with logos obscured almost looks like a generic stock photo.
Tournament mode
But don’t let any of that fool you. This game is great. Let’s take a look at tournament mode.
In every level, you’re given a few similar objectives. Get a high score, find all the technical lines, and find and destroy certain items throughout the level.
Your level of completion of these objectives earns you respect. If you only find a few of the items, you’ll get some respect, but you can’t get 5 now and 5 next time. You have to have a clean run and collect them all at once to get all 10 points.
The technical lines are similar to gaps in the Tony Hawk series, but better. Hitting R2 will show the lines, color coded by difficulty. To trigger a line, all you have to do is roll through all the numbers without bailing. There are a few lines where you skate between objects and the line keeps going even if the combo ended. Most lines are either transfers or long grinds though.
Here’s where things get interesting. When you land one of the lines, you are awarded with more time for your run, based on how hard it is. This introduces a little bit of strategy. When trying to collect all the items, do you rush through the level? Or do you take a little time to hit some technical lines and extend your time limit first? Can you do any fast enough for it to be worth it? Can you rearrange your route through the level to make it work?
An example of this during my playthrough was in Detroit. While trying to hit all of the valves, I had trimmed my route down to almost speed-run levels, with no wasted movements. Even so, I kept coming a few seconds short. I found a way to re-route my run where I spent an extra 15 seconds getting a 20 second technical line. That gave me just enough time to pull it off.
The technical lines have another function too. By hitting L2, you stop and go into Skater’s Eye view, where you can look around the level and see all the lines. In the first level, the only way you’ll find the last boombox is if you look up and realize that the rafters are skateable.
Once you score enough points in a level, you unlock a photoshoot. It’s a simple level where you have to get a certain score limit in one try. They’re usually pretty easy. When you get it, you unlock a photo of the skater you are playing as. Sometimes they’re kind of lame, like Daewon doing a manual on flat. But it’s still a really cool idea. I like that it’s giving me a picture from a real photoshoot instead of giving me a screenshot of what I just did.
Sometimes, you unlock new tricks. This is an interesting idea. Your stats are fixed throughout the game, but you continue to learn new tricks.
These regular levels are broken up by a couple of competitions. They both have a street section, a vert section, and a best trick section. Strangely, your score is just how many points you got in each section, which means that the best trick is weighted really low. That’s fine though, because you only get one chance, and if you bail your trick, you don’t get to try again.
The competition levels have technical lines and barrels to hit, but they aren’t required for full respect. Going out of your way to get extra time for your run is always a good idea though.
If you’re good, you can go from title screen to beating the last competition in 20 minutes. When you win, you’ll unlock a bonus fantasy character. But the game gives you a good reason to keep playing.
Unlockables
After beating the game, you get access to the mansion. But the every room in the mansion is locked. You get keys by completing every level 100%. Some of these are really challenging. Getting the full score in the PlayStation park and the technical lines in Detroit is tough, but it feels great when you finally pull it off.
But wait, there’s more! Once you have the keys to the mansion, you can find coins inside the mansion. Most of these are really easy to get, but it depends on your skater. Getting this coin high above a vert ramp as Daewon Song can take a little bit of work.
With all the coins collected in both wings of the mansion, you unlock Master Ao, a playable skater with maxed out stats.
All told, each character can unlock photoshoot images, a deck, a secret skater, and a video. The videos are great, and exactly what you would expect, unlike some of the other games I’ve played lately.
The next mode I tried is endurance mode. In it, you play each level and do the tricks that come up on screen. This idea was reused in some of the later Tony Hawk games. You’ll do grabs, flips, grabs with spins, grinds, and even manuals. You’ll breeze through almost all of the endurance stages until the last couple of levels. I had to retry the last one countless times and refine my strategy until I finally got it. When you beat it, you unlock another level – the convoy. This is a really cool level where you’re skating on halfpipes being towed by semi trucks. You can transfer between them and try to make it to the end. There aren’t any challenges or goals, but it’s still really interesting. And it’s disorienting when you’re in the air.
The difficulty of this game is really fair and well-balanced. The game actually helps you in a lot of ways, so the difficulty comes from the actual challenges, not the controls. Some of the technical lines are very precise grinds, but you are slightly magnetically attracted to the rails. It’s rare that you come very close to a grind, but miss. Also, you can land a trick from almost any angle. If you fly out of a ramp, your character levels out in the air and you land on flat. One of the most annoying things in the Tony Hawk games is just barely missing the edge of a very narrow ramp and bailing.
Last is the rotation. I think they went a little bit too far in this regard. If you’re sideways in the air, your skater will rubber band either forward or to fakie. Sometimes this is helpful, but it really interferes with grinds.
Grinds are on a physical system, where the grind you do depends on your orientation to the rail and how you’re leaning. It wasn’t really topped until Skate came out and revolutionized control entirely. If you land parallel and hit down triangle, you’ll do a 5-0 grind. If you spin sideways and hit down triangle, you’ll do either a tailslide or a bluntside.
This would be awesome, except for the rubbery spin mechanics. In the endurance mode, I had to do a noseslide, but kept either doing a shifty into a nosegrind, or a full 180 into a switch nosegrind. It’s too hard to purposely land sideways.
There are a few more issues too. You’ll find yourself fighting with the camera more often than you’d like. Sometimes, you line yourself up just right for a rail, but you’re coming straight at the camera and end up missing. It’s not unexpected for a game this age, but during fast-paced technical line attempts, it’s very frustrating.
In the end, Grind Session is a very solid game, and it would have been an excellent first entry in a long skateboarding series. If they expanded the game with real nollie and fakie stances and manuals that you can actually balance, they could have rivaled Pro Skater 2 or even topped it.
Instead, the developer, Shaba games, tried to make an extreme scooter game using the Grind Session engine. After that, they were tapped to make all the last-gen and offshoot Tony Hawk games, like Pro Skater 3 for PlayStation 1, Underground 2 for PSP, and Project 8 for PS2.
It’s a shame. But the good news is, you can play a great game that still holds up well for only a few bucks. It’s not rare or popular right now, but it’s definitely worth owning.
That’s all for this review. Now I know you’ve all played Grind Session. Let me know what you thought about it in the comments. What games would you like to see me play next?