Downward – Parkour Tips

Intro

Сrеdit gоеs to Dark Redshift !

I’ve just beaten the first ending, where the strange woman betrays you and tries to do…something with the tech stones and despite some frustration getting started, I still loved the game. There were some glitches here and there, common frame drops and some egregious world holes and the resulting pop-in due to the landscape not loading straight away, but the last 2 are more to do with the fact it’s unreal engine 4 and my machine is from 2013.

Now, as there is no proper tutorial in this game e.g. the popups it does have combined with a more traditional training level of sorts with more detailed instructions when meditating, and proper video walkthroughs or parkour guides are almost non-existent at time of writing, there’s some tips you should know:

Wall Moves

The different wall moves you can do vary depending on the what is on the wall or ledge you are jumping to. Little wooden scaffolds that look like ladders are there for climbing onto the ledge, dark red mosaics are for wall-climbing (vertical wallruns), orange-red mosaics are for wallruns and blue mosaics are for wall jumping.

I was caught out a lot on the wallrun challenge in the animus…I mean astral plane due to not recognising the difference straight away as I didn’t know it existed. This led to a lot of restarts of that challenge as the problem spot was a wallrun wall followed by two wall jump walls (just before the first slingshot) and I kept trying to wallrun on the blue walls, meaning I kept missing the spring anomaly.

Planets

Planets need to be unlocked first by collecting the tech stone shards (if that’s what they are) in each major zone. Until you enter the next zone after unlocking the woman’s gamma planet seal, you will only have access to gamma. Beta is unlocked in the Winter Sea at the end, on top of the huge tower on the opposite side of the sky run. Alpha is unlocked after the 3D lava maze in the lava zone (with the giant turtle or tortoise).

Gamma turns the world to night (in some zones) and makes things float in the air, allowing you to reach distant areas in particular zones by hopping over moving or spinning pieces of rock or masonry.

Beta causes a heat wave from a volcanic planet (perhaps actually a neutron star?) that slowly drains your health. Lighting lanterns stays the heat, ironically, as well as lighting the way in dark areas. Drinking from a fountain or using a healing charge can also help restore health if you can’t reach a lantern in time. I think it also raises lava from where it usually rests, which I think made rock platforms raise with it. I don’t know the specifics and I’m basing what I think I know off of the underground lane by the citadel which requires Beta to make it through.

Alpha causes the water level in several zones to rise and the time to shift to a sunny day with a blue sky. The spring tides help with getting to areas otherwise too high to reach. Bear in mind you can’t climb onto low walls just under the surface, which may be annoying in the crossroads zone.

New Moves and Powers

For those attempting the astral plane challenges, you will want to wait until you at least unlock the slingshot. This is unlocked in the Winter Sea and you will need it. The wallrun challenge for example cannot be completed unless you unlock the power first: focus works, but the actual slingshot move doesn’t. I learned that the hard way, just like a lot of players. Platform spawning is unlocked in the lava zone.

Unlike other parkour platformers on PC like Mirror’s Edge & Dying Light and more like ones such as the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games (except Forgotten Sands), you will want to play this game with keyboard and mouse, rebinding as you see fit and most ergonomic for a parkour platformer. The reason for this is that the controller has absurdly low turning/look speed even at the highest level and the slingshot move doesn’t work. It’s bound to jump/wallrun etc. which is Right Trigger (R for short) by default, but it just won’t trigger on controller. It works just fine on mouse and keyboard though.

Dashing

Dashing parkour combos are the hardest moves to master bar none. One challenge requires you to master it by making daring charges off ledges and combining it with slingshotting, jumping, spring jumping and wallrunning. The latter 3 of those are fun. The former 2 can suck off a cactus; trying to dash or dash-jump to far away small ledges results in our mysterious traceur veering to the side while the camera shakes, more often than not missing the ledge you were aiming for. I also haven’t got the hang of dashing into a slingshot move when you reach the spiral ledges in the dash challenge. I also cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the rest of the way up the tower to the exit. None of that is fun.

The wall jump challenge throws a dash-wall jump at you near the end. forcing you to dash and jump at a wall jump wall (blue mosaic) so you can make it across football fields worth of empty space. If you can’t master that here, you can’t beat the challenge without cheats. It is entirely doable though, just very hard.

Combat

What passes for it anyway. Drones are beaten either by making them explode on their own and trying to dash out of the blast radius, or sneaking up behind them and hitting the glowing switch on their backs. For the rock monsters and skeletons animated by dry artefacts, dash away from them as they attack (they spawn spikes of rock, ice or lava depending on the monster), wait for the artefacts to turn blue, then quickly attempt to collect them, prising them off the monsters and killing them once the last one comes off. You may want to use the left mouse button (slingshot and alternate use key) as it’s easier than fiddling around for E.

Some artefacts can and will fall off ledges or into water out of bounds and as there’s no actual underwater swimming, you cannot reach them. Fortunately if you leave the area and come back, the lost pieces will respawn in the fight area without forming the monsters again.

Challenges

As before, do not attempt most challenges until you unlock all anomaly powers i.e. slingshot and platform spawn due to bugs mentioned above. Meditation lets you use all your powers at will for practice, but if you are playing on controller, you certainly cannot win even the easy ones if they include slingshots.

You can use the mark whenever you like when trying to reach a challenge and within it. Use it often to learn the course and what you need to do first, and then try for silver medals. Don’t bother with gold because it’s a pain in the a.rse and I hate time trials. Unless you really are good enough to beat the gold time, just cheat when you want the gold. Otherwise take your time. Don’t try to aim for the top of leaderboard either: I noticed when I played that they’ve been hacked, so the highest ranking are at 1 to a 10th or so of a second. Needless to say you won’t find me on it at any ranking.

Some moves in the challenges are pretty unique and don’t appear often in the main game. My favourite is the triangle jump. Coming from Shadow the Hedgehog, triangle jumps in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Titanfall 2 are awesome.

If there’s two walls facing each other in a narrow passage, you do a wallrun along one and jump to the other, wallrun along that and repeat. Another form of triangle jump can be done with wall jump walls only or a combination of wallrun walls and wall jump ones in a chain. The wall jump only ones are from Sonic Heroes where I first saw the move (Shadow’s one is better, the best ones I mentioned follow the Shadow method).

One challenge also has a vertical triangle jump at the end! It’s basically similar to the final assault course on Sasuke. (The Japanese original of Ninja Warrior, English dub and otherwise. Not the UK and US ripoffs)

The tiny pillars just before the vertical triangle jump section are stupid however. You will want to look down when jumping from them to judge your jumps. Even if your legs didn’t appear when looking down (a common undeserved criticism made by people who are s.hit at 3D platforming, especially in first person games), pretending your legs are directly below the camera can also help. I usually just ignore my legs are even there, as it’s a video game and it isn’t like I’m using my own at that point anyway. The last part about platforming where you can’t see your legs is more a tip for other games with first person platforming in them, mainly shooters.

Ziplines

Unlike all other parkour platformers I’ve played and all other platformers in general such as Tomb Raider 2 & 3 (plus the prequel trilogy), ziplines are a little dodgy in this game. Sometimes when sliding down one to the end, you die as soon as you reach it, even though there’s no danger. Sometimes you don’t, it depends on the specific zipline. You may have to press jump to let go early as soon as you are low over solid ground. Don’t try this if there’s spring anomalies at the end, such as the exit zipline from the end of the Winter Sea tower.