Parkour: Roof Riders

Summary

Parkour is the latest extreme sport fad to go global on YouTube in the last couple of yours. Teenagers are ditching their skateboards ad snowboards for street-style gymnastics. With parkour there's no need for any fancy equipment: it's just about navigating around a city in the most efficient way possible. And by efficient, I mean jumping over garbage cans, walls, benches and any other barriers along the way.

If you don't have the body to actually engage in the sport, check out Parkour: Roof Riders where you can have extreme fun without ever breaking into a sweat.

Parkour: Roof Riders takes place in a city on the street, on rooftops and stacked up trash containers. Now it's up to you to make past all of these barriers as you run across the urban landscape.

It's not just about jumping over stuff; you also have to make sure to do so with style. That's why even when you aren't busy jumping from rooftop to rooftop, it's important to make sure and perform a good deal of stunts for some precious extra points.

Jumping, flipping and rolling over is all done by swiping your finger across the screen. There are four different jumps that you can use to make through the city in one piece.

• Short Jump: A small, pretty weak jump that is just strong enough to get you over small obstacles. Just tap the screen to complete a short jump.
• Long Jump: This jump is a bit more hardcore and should be used to hop from one rooftop to the next. Slide your finger upwards to initiate a long jump.
• Frontal Jump: Every time a horizontal arrow appears on the screen, swipe your finger across the screen to the right. This allows you to do a somersault across long flat objects in your way.
• Roll Down: This allows you to roll underneath an object. Just swipe down in a straight line on the screen.

The longer you can survive using these four tricks, the more points you will accrue.
There are also some additional jumps that can be used to obtain bonus points for style. Try to make them look as awesome and complicated as possible to earn the maximum amount of points.

There's a separate menu with more detailed explanations for each "trick" that you can check out before you get started.

At the beginning, you start off with just two tricks. The more points you have, the more tricks get unlocked. But actually, if you experiment with some of these swipe gestures you can do all of the tricks without ever actually "unlocking" them.

There are four scenarios, which you can run and jump through. The most simple one is the street mode. Things get more challenging once your in the port or jumping over rooftops. But you'll have to earn your way up to get to these levels.

The controls for Parkour: Roof Riders are pretty simple. Using swipe gestures you can make your character do just about anything.

If you need to read over the rules or tricks during the game, just click on the question mark in the right corner. On the left side, you select between different game characters.

Just below that is a special button that lets you pick between low and high graphics resolution.

In the middle of the screen is the level selection screen.

During the game, the screen is filled with just you, the street and barriers along the way. It's actually nice to see such a clean and understandable screen.
For those of you are into keeping score, you can compare your results with other players online by clicking on Scores.
 

Parkour: Roof Riders didn't pose me any problems in terms of speed and stability. Reliable and sturdy performance throughout.

The lite version of Parkour: Roof Riders is available for free from the Android Market. The full paid version will set you back $1.99.