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Runaway: A Road Adventure Review by Jen A wacky and improbable story. Wacky and improbable puzzles. Wacky and improbable characters. These are the mainstays, practically the Gilgameshes, of third-person inventory games—they've been there since the beginning. They've been done and redone several hundred times each. I'll be right up front with you: I find myself somewhat less than thrilled that these games are still being made. Along comes Runaway, three years in the releasing, if not the making, having originally been introduced in Spanish, in Spain, and slowly wending its way throughout the various continents and languages until, finally, we are presented with the English version. In it, we find ourselves playing as Brian Basco, a young university student who has just accepted a prestigious berth in a graduate program at Berkeley. He sets off on his cross-continental drive and immediately runs down a woman with his car, and thus we are introduced to Gina. Brian becomes sidetracked not by lust for this woman but rather because he wants to do the right thing. He picks her up and drives her straight to the hospital, wherein begins the game proper. Runaway is an odd amalgam of other games and movies, little bits of this and that from here, there, and everywhere, and wholly derivative of these sources. It attempts to pay homage to a variety of things but only two of its inspirations rise close enough to the surface to become recognizable. The primary movie Runaway brings to mind is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, with its busload of transvestites stranded in the middle of nowhere. You see how this all plays into my "wacky and improbable" thesis for this review? The overarching gameplay model for Runaway, I believe, is the first Broken Sword (although many nods are given throughout to other games of yore). Gina is to Brian as Broken Sword's Nico is to George, cast as a maybe-unrequited love interest and purportedly a central character in the game but unwittingly relegated (by the men who designed the game) to merely a foil, the raison d'etre for the pickle that Brian (or George) finds himself in, time after time. Runaway is almost flavorless, with no new ideas and no new puzzle types. Gameplay is 99% "get the plunger from the bathroom to give to the plumber in the living room to make him expose the putty knife in his butt crack for you to grab and use, instead of the machete that you already have in your inventory, which still doesn't work, dammit, no matter how many times you try it, to cut the vine that you need to repair the ladder to the attic, which you pick up and put in your pocket and carry off to Timbuktu in order that you may climb the tree and get the apple that will finish off the bad guy" type (this is not an actual example from Runaway, of course, but it is totally representative of the kinds of puzzles found in Runaway). In addition, there are some frustrating pixel hunts, wherein the hotspot is of the magnitude of three molecules or so, as is the item said hotspot is indicating. At least there are no mazes. Runaway's graphics are a thing of animated beauty, on the other hand. The screens are carefully and lovingly drawn, and work on the characters' faces and expressions is very well done. Cutscenes are fuzzier than the actual gameplay screens, and often there are too few frames of animation; nevertheless there is some pretty darn good cartooning in these. I have to admit I had some fun playing Runaway, even though I groaned out loud at some of the design choices where the game could have either gone a new and interesting direction or taken the same old well-trodden path of its predecessors. I had been going to give it the Thumb Up when I first finished, but the more I thought about it, the crankier I got. I don't know why we are subjected to an endless barrage of these kinds of games being fobbed off on us in some kind of misguided effort to turn back the hands of time, gaming-wise. This turned into kind of a general rant at Runaway's expense,
didn't it? Well ... in the interest of fairness to prospective
buyers, I'll sum up with this: You will like this game if you
have played only a few third-person inventory games before and
are not sick of them yet or if you just can't get your fill of
this type of gameplay. There is nothing whatsoever inherently
wrong with Runaway, taken as an individual product and
not as a member of the group "all third-person inventory
adventure games," and it really is well put together for
a representative of its subgenre. But I will go ahead and give
it the Rotten Egg anyway because that's how I feel about it in
my heart of hearts. |
The Verdict
The Lowdown Developer: Pendulo Available for: Four Fat Chicks Links Screenshots
System Requirements Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP Where to Find It GoGamer
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