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On its head - 5 parkour-based videogames that changed gaming forever
In celebration of Dominic Di Tommaso’s Sydney Opera House freerunning performance, Phan-Dom of the Opera, we take a look at five parkour-based videogames that changed the gaming landscape forever…
Some things just go together. Like cheese and crackers, movies and popcorn, skateboarding and urban planning or Red Bull and… well, anything. In gaming, freerunning or “Parkour” have always felt like a no-brainer pairing. Movement through fantastical worlds should be partnered with fantastical movement, which is the embodiment of parkour as a discipline. But you might be surprised when you flex the old grey matter and cast your memory banks to games that feature the activity in a meaningful way, and realise there are actually very few. And It’s one thing to vault over a piece of cover, or an impediment, and quite another to wall-run to a ledge, sprint and then launch from up on high to a commando roll some two, three, even four stories below, all while in the heat of battle, or as part of an epic escape. Because: videogames.
Unfortunately the above doesn’t wholly exist across all games, because often the player just isn’t gifted such emphatic movements as part of their basic in-game traversal makeup. It’s a travesty, really. And something we hope changes in the future.
Dominating Sydney
© Andy Green / Red Bull Content Pool
Still, the handful of games that have done it, have done it well. With one series in particular making it an essential part of its design tentpoles, while others have built entire maps and challenges around parkour itself. And while Australia’s own Dominic Di Tommaso flexes his own skill tree across, and within, the iconic Sydney Opera House, we thought we’d take the time to explore (and softly rank) five essential games that feature parkour in a significant way. (Some of these have multiple entries as actual franchises, so we’re exploring them as IP rather than as individual games.)
A lot of that normalisation has come from the implementation of such skills in the games mentioned below...
It’s important to note games have wall-running and slide options now -- especially in first-person titles -- almost baked into the core movement experience, and a lot of that normalisation has come from the implementation of such skills in the games mentioned below. Some games are fresh and new, too, which we also felt was important, just to highlight persistent representation of freerunning in games though we’d be remiss to not suggest we still need more.
So below is a list of five games that have altered or championed parkour in one way or another, and all meaningfully and with reverence to the discipline, in a loose hierarchical order from five to one, with one being the standout. Each has also been chosen based on their representation of the sport, which we’ll highlight as we go through them.
The ninja fantasy is very real in Ghostrunner
© 505 Games
5. Ghostrunner - All In! Games, 505 Games
Express yourself in absolute style with an albeit limited, but super cool, moveset...
In Ghostrunner we get the style and flow of parkour, and what it means to look and feel cool while you’re doing it. In as much as the sport is about freedom of expression, like with other urban disciplines such as skating, athletes also want to look their best while doing it. Linking tricks and making combos work in a fluid way, while also making things that are difficult look easy, is a key aspect of the sport and one the athletes aspire to perfect.
Ghostrunner is a cyberpunk first-person action-platformer where slides and wall-runs and major jumps are a key to pushing through its tightly-designed arenas, which are all linked via purposefully-built funnels that allow you to express yourself in absolute style with an albeit limited, but super cool, moveset. You also play the game as a cybernetically-enhanced assassin who’s lost their memory and is beset upon by what you can only assume is the baddies.
What’s left from this very basic setup is a game that is all about speed and precision, which goes hand in hand with trial and error. Thankfully a forgiving checkpoint system and all the tools needed to master each bottleneck means you’ll be freerunning your way to solving the game’s central mystery, taking out its pesky baddies, and doing it all in absolute style.
Floor is lava (monsters)
© Insomniac Games/Microsoft Game Studios
4. Sunset Overdrive - Insomniac Games, Microsoft Game Studios
The fluidity of these additions alongside the flips and vaults and wall-runs of Sunset Overdrive still helped us camp the game here...
In Sunset Overdrive we get an example of how parkour movements can be used to conquer, or elevate, an environment. Which is a fundamental part of the discipline. Taking into account heights and angles and combo potential means an athlete can make the most of the smallest or largest space before them. This ethos drives the core design principle of Sunset Overdrive, while also throwing in moving obstacles by way of its baddies and other mechanised or animated environmental hazards, making mastery of your environment and how you approach it paramount to the experience.
Ignoring the setup that sees an energy drink (clearly a rival) responsible for mutating people into lava-spitting, mindless monsters. Or that the character moveset is the most removed from traditional parkour here (taking into account grinding and zip-lining). The fluidity of these additions alongside the flips and vaults and wall-runs of Sunset Overdrive still helped us camp the game here in this list as a game-changing standout. And of all the games mentioned in this list, outside of what takes the coveted number one spot, Sunset Overdrive truly relies on character movement to bring the full experience together -- combat, progression and basic discovery and exploration of the world are frenetically enhanced with the aforementioned dangers. But mastering these with a keen eye for combo opportunities throughout the game-world means you’ll be king of the strip, in no time.
Old-school
© EA/DICE
3. Mirror’s Edge - DICE, EA
Both games featured a momentum-based lean on the player, where it felt like slowing down left you vulnerable and open to either failure or capture (or worse)...
Mirror’s Edge (and its reboot Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst) is the best representation of the challenge and toll of parkour on athletes. As a game it truly brought the sport (and discipline) to the fore thanks largely to being the first of its kind in first-person, while the original game’s linear level blueprint allowed for developer DICE to craft freerunning courses designed for tight skill execution and mastery of usable parts of the environment.
The game also featured the option to play through the entire experience without killing anyone, which felt closer to the spirit of freerunning while also speaking to the mantra of freeform agency for players. The game’s reboot, Catalyst, served up a fairly similar story and setting, but opened up the playspace in a more sandbox approach.
Both games featured a momentum-based lean on the player, where it felt like slowing down left you vulnerable and open to either failure or capture (or worse) from the enemy, which was amplified with the main character Faith’s frantic breathing as well as the truly realistic audio of what can only be described as “urban scampering” by this writer.
A giant leap forward
© Ubisoft
2. Assassin’s Creed - Ubisoft
No game had ever featured animations as broad and as numerous as Assassin’s Creed when it first launched...
Some could argue the entire Assassin’s Creed series should be represented here at number one, but for reasons explored in the next entry, it sits here -- perched, if you will -- at a still respectable number two.
Assassin’s Creed’s best representation of the discipline comes in the form of the inaccessible, now accessible. Not one to ultimately highlight parkour in a flashy way, Assassin’s Creed used parkour jumping, climbing and perching as a means of avoiding the enemy while also scouting or reconoitering for assassination targets. So important has this movement-set become to this franchise, that the latest critically-acclaimed entry, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, had the least amount of contextual reasoning for it, yet kept it in anyway “because maybe vikings did climb like that”.
No game had ever featured animations as broad and as numerous as Assassin’s Creed when it first launched, all of which was inspired by parkour. And among all its many iterations and releases since then (2007), no other game or franchise has even come close.
It might not be about being the most stylish, but it’s certainly about being the most skilled and about using said skillset to be the best damned Hidden One you can be.
Dying to know
© Techland
1. Dying Light - Techland
The whole setup is reward for survival, and both games are simply the culmination of everything mentioned in the other entries...
While Mirror’s Edge wholly embraced the world of parkour as a contextual base for its dystopian setting, Dying Lights 1 and 2 gave rise to the discipline as a necessary skill for surviving a zombie apocalypse. Moreover, your gradual learning and understanding of the game’s myriad parkour moves meant you built into the experience over time, and with its retread elements, that is the fact you return to many spaces over and over again given each’s open-world setting, you gained a new appreciation for the different paths an expanding moveset could offer.
Additionally, the worlds of Harran and Villedor were designed to be tackled in highly dynamic ways based on player-preference, skill and challenge, meaning the system is forever used, but almost never repeated the same way twice. This allowed for both a freedom of expression approach to how you go about it, while also offering up tangible rewards through new access routes to harder-to-reach areas. The whole setup is reward for survival, and both games are simply the culmination of everything mentioned in the other entries, in a single package. Dying Light 2 being the most recent entry is also the most complete, offering up double the moves of the first game.
/End
What these titles have all done for games is promote the idea of fluidity and freedom, as well as the design of environments that let players not just move through worlds and levels with confidence and style, but also choice and a sense of urgency and bravado. And while parkour as a discipline and sport and activity isn't singularly represented in many games, plenty of aspects of it are and with games like the five mentioned above not only highlighting freerunning, but actively championing it, we can only see more games in the future embracing this unique and artistic form of expression and movement.
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