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Free Running PSP & PS2 - Review
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PSP RRP: £34.99
PS2 RRP: £24.99
Out 20 April
Buy PSP game for £24.98 >>
Buy PS2 game for £17.98 >>
Everyone can do a gate vault, right? There’s something about blithely skipping over a gate that makes you feel happy and reminds you of your childhood, when the whole world was a playground. That’s basically what “free running” - or Parkour - is all about. It’s making a playground of urban environments, traversing obstacles as efficiently and quickly as possible while being a cool cat, brimming with style. One of the most well-known examples is the opening chase sequence in the latest Bond movie, Casino Royale. The scene features Sebastien Foucan, the Tony Hawk of free running sport, and he’s your mentor in the game.
After learning the ropes of wall running, sling-shotting off poles and spring-boarding from ledge to ledge, you’re off to explore London - and 10 different levels around the world, once you unlock them. Or should we say, if you unlock them, because you may run out of patience before you really start to enjoy your running.
The first problem with this game is the dreadful camera. For a game entirely about flow and grace, it’s extremely annoying to feel as though you are literally dragging the camera round with you. You’ll often find it either can’t keep up or overshoots you, leaving you having to stop short. This is simply unforgivable. The gameplay mechanics themselves also leave a lot to be desired, with the PSP’s analogue stick failing to keep you running in a straight line without you veering off at an angle and missing your mark.
The other major problem here is that while free running is a pretty cool thing to watch in real life, running up walls and making death-defying leaps in games isn’t anything new. Buy any other platformer and you’ll get to do all the same stuff, but with better controls and some fighting thrown in for good measure.
Ultimately, Free Running is less "urban cool" and more "utter crap" and we suspect the only people who buy it are people who do it for real. A few dozen sales, then...
4/10
Review by Kirsten Kearney
