Lincs parkour in the city

London city that is! Here is a blow by blow account of this furious ordeal!

After several delays in train service in Lincoln, Spalding and P’borough Adz and I eventually made it to the kings cross station in the heart of London. Unfortunately the heart of London is not the heart of London parkour, instead we needed to head to the city’s south bank where all manner of famous spots used by Urban free flow and 3run can be found. the fastest way around London as you probably know is the London underground, so without further ado we jumped on board and were soon on our way too Waterloo station. On arrival we met up with none other than corks and balance Tim, who had been staying with a friend near London for the week, a nice surprise =). Within the hour we had lost him and did not see him again!

Heading to the nearest burger king we ate a hearty meal and were back on track for training, when suddenly DISASTER STRIKES! Adam had left his camera and MP3 at burger king and we were already 20 minutes away by the time he realised. Sprinting back there was no sign of the lost property. Hopeless, we left the burger king and trudged out of the station, but before we reached the station doors we were met by (Connor) Contrix, one of Urban freeflows sponsored athletes and an awesome guy. Explaining our predicament to him he ushered us back into burger king and demanded to the manager that we see the CCTV footage from that area. Apparently this sparked off something as the camera magically appeared in the hands of a cleaner in seconds, fishy? YES! A majhor relief? certainly! Training with Contrix until dark we witnessed some truly awesome tricking and in the undercover “Tramps kitchen spot”. After parting ways with Connor we found our youth hostel, got some eats and caught up on our sleep.

Mirrors Edge

you may or may not have heard of this title, but it combines 3 of my favourite things in the world together: Parkour + Women + Video games

in the past we have seen many games with ‘Parkour’ in it. for example Assassins creed, Prince of Persia, Ninja Gaiden etc. but none of it has really captured Parkour as it should be. free flowing constant movement. with nothing in your way to stop you going to where you want to go… UNTIL NOW

this new game is called Mirrors Edge, its a First Person perspective game, and puts you in control of a character named faith. she is a female traceur and her sister has been kidnapped (that’s all we know about the story so far)
but that doesn’t matter, because what i am here to show you is about the movement. this game is slick! maybe not always realistic, but it sure as hell beats that crappy ‘free running’ game that was released a year or so ago.

the game asks you to build up momentum with your movements, allowing each thing you do in succession to be slightly bigger/faster than the one before it.

there are no ‘markers’ in the game as such. you are free to go where you want to go. but there is something called runner vision, which makes items appear brighter/more colourful/in focus if it is somewhere that would help your run. pretty much like real life, where you assess your surroundings whilst running, always looking for the best/easiest rout.

anyway. there is only so much you can say about a game that has only been shown off once, but im sure i can dig up some more info if people are interested

here is a video of the game in action

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