Free Running is an ancient game from 2009. It's a whopping 16 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.
And wow... this game is hot garbage. I mean, amateur game developers pump out asset flips and RPG Maker fan-fiction trash every day that ends in "y", and it's no surprise that it's all valueless, but this game is from Rebellion, you know, the guys that did Evil Genius and Sniper Elite... amazing game franchises. I guess for every Mass Effect you're going to get the occasional Anthem, but even that is being too kind... Anthem had a fun, if short single player campaign. But I digress, this is trash. Why do I say that?
Free Running is a handheld PSP/Nintendo DS (Although the Nintendo DS version was never published) game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld/console gaming audience. It's a parkour simulator where you have a variety of parkour themed challenges and game modes where you run and jump around. Kinda like a realistic platformer, I guess.
While the selection of parkour themed moves and challenges is comprehensive, the game is a dogs breakfast in terms of poor visuals and sloppy handheld porting.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
The graphics aren't great. While the character models look almost passable for 2009, the backdrops look like they're from 1999 and it just clashes and looks awful.
This was never AAA... the kind of game that went straight into the bargain bins you walked straight past at the front of the games shop. That will understandably be a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises.
To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game.
Another defect in the game caused by the console-peasant-centric design is the intolerably bad camera controls. There's no effective mouselook, and control of the viewing angles is deliberately outside of reasonable control from the user.
This defect springs from the limitations of inferior console peasant children's toy gamepads, but on PC we don't have this limitation due to KB+M controls... however, the developer deliberately chose to arrogantly foist this handicap onto PC gamers. Out of spite, or laziness, it's unclear, regardless, once more console peasants and console devs have made gaming worse for everyone.
Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 7 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?
Free Running is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $6 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again.
For comparison, the $6 asking price for this game could get you games like "Rust", "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" or "Disco Elysium". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
