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Runaway: A Road Adventure (PC DVD) | 
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| From: FHI
Category: Video Games
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £3.79
You Save: £6.20 (62%)
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1658
Platform: Windows Xp
Genre: adventure-games
Media: Video Game
Age: 11 - 18 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
EAN: 3512289012850
ASIN: B000O34QRG
Release Date: May 11, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: UK VERSION, BRAND NEW , INSTOCK NOW FOR IMMEDIATE DESPATCH
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Why, oh why, can't I give less than 1 star? June 21, 2008
Adomestikgoddess (Wales,UK/CA,USA)
I don't actually own this game, my son has it installed on his comp and I found myself playing it at some point.
There's no way to be objective about this game without using overtly profane language.
So I'll try to start with the games good points. It took me an excruciating period of time to realise there was only 1.
"It had some pretty pictures". And, to tell the truth, even that only went to a point. The locations were stunning, as they tend to be in games such as this, and while the main characters were very pretty (but wouldn't they be?) most of the other characters seemed to be very disproportionate (anatomically) and cartoony, even if their roles weren't meant to be comical.
Now for the areas where the game simply failed;
The dialogue
the 'acting'
the characters
the story line
most of the puzzles
and, worst of all, the monologues.
The main character is clearly the kind of guy the writer wants to be; Extremely intelligent (though not particularly knowledgeable about the creation of peanut butter in the real world), or, at least, on an accelerated learning programme that has allowed him to finish his degree young and go onto PhD very early. I think he was studying physics. Not only that but he's extremely attractive. He bears no resemblance to a real life human.
He's probably the worst character of the lot, but don't get me wrong; they're all pretty bad.
The dialogue was clearly composed by somebody who has clearly never experienced a conversation with another living person. Or perhaps a person who is under the impression that the way people talk in Marvel Comics is the way people really talk.
While it is possible that the actors did try to work around the script in order to make everything sound more organic than it was... I really can't be certain. Such an endeavor would have been doomed to failure anyway.
The accents of many (most) of the characters are poorly mimicked stereotypes. All in all, I guess they just didn't have much of a budget for voice actors when they came to that part of the game.
I don't mind the story lines in my computer games being far fetched... Hell; it's the reason I play quite a few of them. And yet, while there have been plenty of books and movies with similar styles to this (a guy and a girl hook up with some mysterious artifact, on the run from hit men... It could almost be the De Vinci code, but this makes that book pass for literature.) the plot holes are too many and too big to over look. For example, it is possible that the girl was 'paralysed with fear' but I can't help but think that, if their dad was being violently interrogated by hoodlums a normal person would try to sneak away and find help, not wait and watch. And then, why would he contact his daughter, putting her into immediate danger, in the first place?
OK, I can answer that last question; the makers don't want some chubby balding old man to be the hero's love interest.
Then there's the puzzles... A lot of these games have a history involve giving us problems which are eventually solved through means no sane person would actually resort to. (I think there was even a joke about that in Broken Sword 2). This game has too many of them.
People keep telling me that the whole point of games like this is to keep on clicking items and to keep trying to use them with as varied a combination of people an other items as possible until you get results. I keep telling them; "no, that was the point of Myst". In a game like this we're supposed to be given a range of subtle hints that allow us to gradually piece together out objectives and piece together a method of meeting them in the dialogue or the item descriptions. That's no for a lack of clues... You are given some idea of what you're supposed to do. After all, any die hard fan of this genre will tell you that it's good mental exercise, specifically in the area of lateral thinking. If you are just trying to use random items with people and other random items in order to succeed in life then you won't get far.
I'm really sick of these games trying to be like broken sword when they should be trying to be Discworld Noir (best in the discworld game series). Now There was a game that had you make use of your brain.
In other games there eventually comes a point where a vital item is very subtly hidden, but we get the chance to notice with the occasional glimmer of light coming from it or through very close observation. Rolling your mouse over every pixel on the screen should be a last resort. And when you've used it you should at least be able to say "dang, I should have spotted that". However there were times I did resort to that last method of finding a clue and yet I still found it hard to find items which I knew perfectly well were supposed to be there.
As I mentioned above, the worst part of this game is the monologues. Between every 'act' the main character starts yapping on and on with information that we already know or that will be explained early on in the course of the next out, or is completely irrelevant. Worse still, this is directly after a 'cut scene' and right before another one kicks in. And you can skip none of this, the retarded monologues or the stupid cutscenes. I was there, hammering return (escape only takes you to the options menu), desperately trying to stop him wasting valuable and irreplaceable moments of my lifetimes and nothing worked. I've known plenty of people who talk just too much, but none of them compare to this guy. If somebody I did know, in real life, was to talk as much as him I swear I would kick them in the nuts and smack them repeatedly until they got the message.
Don't by this game. Don't even download it. If somebody tries to give it to you as a gift then ask if you can have the receipt, too.
 Worth sticking with it... June 7, 2008
Lisa (UK)
I've played dozens of point and click adventure games over the years and I believe that you can tell from the first 15 minutes of gameplay whether a game is worth carrying on with. Runaway has very cartoony graphics which put me off at first, the intro is a bit dull and it takes a while for the story to get going.
But I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. Once you realise some of the games little "quirks" - like the fact you can view an item more than once and it will reveal different properties & uses later in the game - it's actually really good fun to play. The story is a little predictable and some of the dialogue just plain cheesy but the puzzles get better as you go along, the locations are varied & interesting and the characters are amusing.
For the less serious gamer, I would recommend this game.
 Broken Sword Wannabe April 6, 2008
Victor Nefarian
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are a number of ways to rate an adventure game that differ greatly from any other type of game. We'll start on familiar territory.
Graphics; very aesthetically pleasing but not well thought out in this case. While graphics aren't an essential selling point of a point-and-click its best that they're as clear as possible so that we don't have to resort to trawling the cursor over every inch of the screen like we're dragging for bodies at the river. In most of these games we'll end up doing that when we're stuck anyway but, in this one, you'll find yourself doing it *all the god damned time*. Plus there's a bunch of objects at *every* location which, ultimately, is completely useless to us. Yeah, I know that 'Red Herrings' are another essential but this goes way too far.
'The Runaway' gets a star for being visually stunning but should lose it again for having clues and other objects frustratingly badly hidden. I'm feeling generous.
Plot; The plot in this game sucks. An adventure game is like an interactive movie and is therefore highly plot driven. I'd give it a point for originality but take it away for just sucking.
Characters; It loses another point here. The main character, Brian Bosco, is a buff nerd who wears glasses he doesn't need (and feels the need to explain this in great detail when he comes to lose them) about to start his degree on the other in a college on the other side of the country. He's very Mary Sue, (an idealised version of the writer) which is worrying because he's extremely easily manipulated by his sexy stripper love interest who talks him into body guarding her but does nothing but lie and omit sections of the truth while doing so. Gina is the only interesting character, largely because she's a liar and we don't get to find out some basic truths about her until several acts into the story. She may be the creator's ideal woman, which is a plus in this case, but it could indicate that he associates lies with women so much that even his dream girl can't stop doing so. The villains are stereotypical Mafia from some cheesy kids show. (actually, no... cartoon mobsters are usually parodies of The Godfather and don't come off so badly). You wouldn't expect mobsters so cheesy in even the worst film/show/game that is intended for adults.
Dialogue and Acting: couldn't get any worse. The script is atrocious. If this story was presented in any other genre the writer would face execution in some countries. Nothing said in this game feels like it would be somebody's natural response in the given situation, not that the situations in the game would happen day to day. I don't know if I should put it down to the script or voice actors but even an actor can discuss their lines with the director/producers in order to make them feel more organic. Saying that I sincerely doubt that there was a director, not for the dialogue, at least.
Cut scenes: These are essential to any game, not just the adventure genre, as they explain the next objectives to the player. While they're possibly more important for a PAC adventure, being that story and environment work together to provide important clues and useful tools, these ones just go on WAY too long. First you get the end of the act, then you have to put up with Brian Bosco sitting in a director's chair for 5 minutes as he gives you the highlights of what you've just done, the highlights of the scenes we don't see and his personal reflections on both, followed by the opening of the next act. It's immensely boring and, inspite of the OOT amount of information provided, leave you with a only a vague sense of what you're meant to do next.
So this game fails on 4 out of the 5 factors I was rating on. I gave an extra star out of sheer generosity and gave 3 out of 5 for 'fun' although, again, that may have been out of the kindness of my heart.
I would tell you not to buy it but there just aren't enough games of this type for me to say that. It's sad; there are so few of them and when one does come out it's as bad as this so it's not going to cause more demand in the market.
No Broken Sword, but getting closer February 3, 2008
S. Gates (East Sussex, UK)
Since the days of Zork and Broken Sword I've been looking for an engrossing, satisfying point and click, and haven't got close. This brought me one step nearer.
Some of the puzzles are a tad easy, and so they compensate by doing silly things like not letting you examine an item on the first look round, but all of a sudden there it is once you need it. This means that if you need an item, you might know what you need but have to scowl the whole area again as it wasn't there the first time. Grr... Make sure you have a walkthrough handy if you get a bit impatient!
The story wasn't bad although I didn't like the characters in the same way I liked George and Nico. In fact, I liked Brian less as the story progressed. It wasn't as gripping as I remember the Broken Swords being first time round, and there doesn't seem to be as much of it. But it does beat a lot of the other point and clicks I've come across in the meantime!
Long story short - yes, it's good. Not great, but good. Well worth a tenner if point and click is your cup of tea. And the more we can encourage the adventure game makers with our pennies, the sooner they will get the idea that this type of game can be really, really good.
Technical Hitch September 25, 2007
B. Sheffield (Manchester UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I tried to install & run this game on two PC's with windows XP and it was rejected on both. Before buying this game ensure that your PC has all the necessary cards, etc. required. Bring back the original Broken Sword type games, more fun without unecessary technical problems!
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