Runaway a Road Adventure by Pendulo Studios

Review by lasanidine

Story: Take a beautiful girl with huge … lips, a smart but somewhat naïve boy with a real inclination to talk add an ancient cross, flavor it with gangsters and let the adventure begin. There is greed, lies, stupidity and murder to flavor the pot.

This is a game long awaited and anticipated. They promised us beautiful graphics and we got those, they promised us lots of locations and lots of interesting characters and we are not disappointed. They are not as many as they promised but who is counting?

There are plenty of puzzles some easy and some a little harder. They left out the maze (there is a small one but you hardly notice it) but not the sound puzzle. There are murders, mayhem and mystery the total of this gives us an entertaining game play.

The game comes with a user manual that explains the mechanics of the game but gives no indication of the minimum requirements. The option screen is simple to use and as far as I can tell the “saves” are not limited.

The characters: All the characters are believable, the goons are goons and the scientists are scientist, the museum janitor is something else and almost the only one who shows a sense of humor.

Brian (the character you play) is the hero of the story he is a brainy kid heading for graduate school when life hits him in the face. He rises to the occasion and does everything that is asked of him but somehow he is not as likable as he should be. He has little compassion or humor in his make up. Gina is sexy and smart but she keeps injuring herself and we do not have enough occasions to really know or like her.

People keep comparing this pair to Nico and George of the Broken Sword games. True there is a resemblance of sorts. While the air sometimes sizzles between Nico and George and Nico has a smart mouth on her we can really feel that they like each other. There is not much chemistry between Gina and Brian in spite of the fact that they end up in the sack.

The show “girls” are more interesting than funny but they are a refreshing change. I like all the characters in Douglasville my favorite is Sushi.

The game engine is sophisticated enough it is easy to move from place to place and speedy for visited locations if you right click with the mouse. With a maximum install the chapters load fast enough. So you really point and click and Brian goes to the indicated place. I found some of the pixel hunting tedious at places. There are no remarkable sound effects the music is pleasant.

This is a good, payable game interspersed with long cut scenes and summations form Brian sitting in his director’s chair, a physics graduate student you say, he should take up the law…

P.S. I did not find any bugs.

I played this game on:
Pentium®4 CPU 2.26GHz
768 MB Ram, XP/Pro
RADEON 9500 Pro / 9700
RADEON 9500 Pro / 9700-Secondary
Creative Audigy Audio Processor (WDM)

Maybe its because I am European, but I found the game very punny!! There were so many film references in the actual scenes it made a good game great.

The 'Girls' were obviously from Priscilla, Queen of the desert, the music used in the ET scene from Close encounters, the delapidated western village from.. well, whichever western you watched last.... the theme, Thelma and Lousie with a twist.. the boring hero with a bent for study and action.. well that could only be Indy (notice how he changed from being an 8 stone weakling into a 12 stone muscleman??)... Oh and I'm not even going to attempt the Gangster characters..

I would Love the makers input as to which films influenced them!!

Tig

Top-notch review for a top-notch game!
Rusty