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Runaway: A Road Adventure

Runaway: A Road Adventure

List Price: $12.99
Your Price: $11.69
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: fun characters
Review: I loved this game at first, but after I got a while into it, I got extremely bored with it. The game looks great and starts off with some interesting puzzles, but in the middle it starts moving at a snail's pace. The storyline progresses at an excruciatingly slow rate while you are stuck in some huge areas trying to solve poorly designed puzzles. The bane of any adventure gamer is the pixel hunt, and this game has plenty of them. When you're not pixel hunting, then chances are you are solving some silly illogical puzzle. And when you are not doing that, you're solving some unoriginal puzzle that you have seen in other adventure games or brain teaser books.

The best part about this game is the graphics. This game is beautiful to look at and has a style that is unmatched by any other adventure game. The cartoony cel-shaded look really adds a lot to this game. The characters fit in perfectly. Every character is exaggerated in some cartoonish way - exaggerated facial features, exaggerated accents, exaggerated personalities, etc. All of the characters in the game are likeable and show that the game was made with lots of inspiration. The game's soundtrack is really good and most of the voice-acting is top-notch. The main character has this "gee whiz" dorkiness that actually ends up being kind of charming.

But it's just so hard to get into this game. The storyline is decent enough, but it progresses so slowly that you can almost forget what's going on in it. Gina (the beautiful girl on the box) disappears from the game for long periods of time, leaving her character totally undeveloped. Since the puzzles are not fun and interesting enough to keep you interested, you have to labor through the game to enjoy it. Many times you will find yourself resorting to a walkthrough, and then rolling your eyes at some of the absurd things that you are supposed to do to make it through the game. This is the problem with mediocre adventure games. The good ones manage to have logical and predictable solutions. The mediocre ones like this force you to try to read the developers' minds and guess at an inane solution. I really wanted to like this game, but it was a disappointment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fantastic style but mediocre gameplay
Review: I loved this game at first, but after I got a while into it, I got extremely bored with it. The game looks great and starts off with some interesting puzzles, but in the middle it starts moving at a snail's pace. The storyline progresses at an excruciatingly slow rate while you are stuck in some huge areas trying to solve poorly designed puzzles. The bane of any adventure gamer is the pixel hunt, and this game has plenty of them. When you're not pixel hunting, then chances are you are solving some silly illogical puzzle. And when you are not doing that, you're solving some unoriginal puzzle that you have seen in other adventure games or brain teaser books.

The best part about this game is the graphics. This game is beautiful to look at and has a style that is unmatched by any other adventure game. The cartoony cel-shaded look really adds a lot to this game. The characters fit in perfectly. Every character is exaggerated in some cartoonish way - exaggerated facial features, exaggerated accents, exaggerated personalities, etc. All of the characters in the game are likeable and show that the game was made with lots of inspiration. The game's soundtrack is really good and most of the voice-acting is top-notch. The main character has this "gee whiz" dorkiness that actually ends up being kind of charming.

But it's just so hard to get into this game. The storyline is decent enough, but it progresses so slowly that you can almost forget what's going on in it. Gina (the beautiful girl on the box) disappears from the game for long periods of time, leaving her character totally undeveloped. Since the puzzles are not fun and interesting enough to keep you interested, you have to labor through the game to enjoy it. Many times you will find yourself resorting to a walkthrough, and then rolling your eyes at some of the absurd things that you are supposed to do to make it through the game. This is the problem with mediocre adventure games. The good ones manage to have logical and predictable solutions. The mediocre ones like this force you to try to read the developers' minds and guess at an inane solution. I really wanted to like this game, but it was a disappointment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Some flaws, but interesting.
Review: I received this game for my birthday. I've got a beast of a computer at home, but I noticed that my maximum installation still skipped on the animation transitions (between the cutscenes). Isn't the point of installing it 100% to get smooth animation? However, despite 3 installation options, the "maximum" installed game still ran off of the CDs, which slowed down the framerate and transition between scenes, which is why the game would oddly pause between transitions. Considering that this game takes up so much space, I thought this choice was odd.

The characters were done rather well, in an interesting way: 3-D modeling to get a 2-D cellshaded effect. Sometimes it works, sometimes you wish they'd sticked to old-fashioned 2D modeling instead, since the look of the game is mostly 2D.

The thing I wish most about the game is that they would use the visual medium more for being visual, rather than just talking about something happening or something that already happened - Show it! Specifically, I'm talking about the prologue, some peoples' past, and most of the text/explanations that happen between the chapters. Also, some of the cut scenes were way too long - there was one near the end of the game -- my phone rang, and a couple of other things happened, and the cutscene was like - an hour long, if you include all conversations and cutscenes, with no way to pause it.

One last thing: I was really disappointed with the ending.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not The Best, Not The Worst
Review: I'll play almost any adventure game, because there aren't so many of them around. I paid $20 for this and don't regret it, but I wish it was a little more fun. There really wasn't that much humor. Some puzzles were tedious, there was a lot of trying everything with everything else for no obvious reason, and a lot of going back to the same places over and over because there is now something there that wasn't there before. If you like middling adventure games with good graphics, this will keep you entertained for a few days.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Be warned.
Review: I'm an avid gamer, and own a moderately stable system - so far, there has only been only game this year that I haven't managed to get to work correctly, and it's this one.

No matter what I try, Runaway refuses to play the movies (cutscenes, etc.) correctly: they're plain gray. The readme included on the CDs states that this could be caused by active virus scanner or firewall (...how unusual...), but disabling them didn't fix the problem for me. No patches available anywhere, either.

Such a shame. What little I managed to see of this game seemed interesting enough - but as it is, it's unplayable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great fun game to play!!
Review: I've been an adventure gamer for many, many years now. My first adventure games were created by Sierra. I loved their games. I remember having to type in what you wanted your main character to do. Talk about frustrating. They were also very expensive...mostly $40-$50. But I still loved it. (Can't wait for the new Leisure Suit Larry to come out!!!)
Adventure games have come a long way since then...most have lost something along the way. I didn't feel that way with this game. I loved this game!!! I don't think I could've gotten a better game for the money. I highy recommend it to all old and new adventurers alike!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Enjoyable
Review: If you like an unrushed adventure games and time to watch short movies--this is the game. The graphics are fairly good and does have some humor at tmes. Good game support which I feel is important.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very enjoyable adventure game
Review: Last year has been a very fruitful one for adventure gamers. Runaway is a fine example of last year's harvest.

It is a "typical" point and click adventure game, which has all the necessary ingredients to make it a success:
(1) Great Plot
(2) Fun, logical puzzles, with no pixel hunting
(3) Very nice graphics, atmospheric and humorous
(4) Pleasant main characters with good voice acting, that dont irritate the player
(5) Atmospheric ambient music and great rock themes.

Conclusion: Another fine example of European programming and and a must have game for all adventure games fans.
Please note that Runaway could become the introductory title for nonadventure games fans, as well!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very enjoyable adventure game
Review: Last year has been a very fruitful one for adventure gamers. Runaway is a fine example of last year's harvest.

It is a "typical" point and click adventure game, which has all the necessary ingredients to make it a success:
(1) Great Plot
(2) Fun, logical puzzles, with no pixel hunting
(3) Very nice graphics, atmospheric and humorous
(4) Pleasant main characters with good voice acting, that dont irritate the player
(5) Atmospheric ambient music and great rock themes.

Conclusion: Another fine example of European programming and and a must have game for all adventure games fans.
Please note that Runaway could become the introductory title for nonadventure games fans, as well!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY, STAY AWAY!!!
Review: Nothing is more disappointing than a really good idea, not executed properly. That is "Runaway". If you are lucky enough to have a computer system that will run it with no problems, then more power to you! But for the rest of us, get ready to pull your hair out. The game is fun, interesting, all that it should be. But there are so many bugs in this game, it will be a surprise if you get through it at all. First, it was supposed to play on my computer - it didn't. So I played it on my husband's computer which is more powerful. Everything was great until I got to chapter 4 (there are 6 chapters in total). Every time I got to a specific point in the game, it would crash and go to the desktop.

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that the readme file gave only Pendulo Studios' website address and nothing more. And when I emailed them with the problems I was having, I never heard back. Not once. There was no phone number given. Then I did a search and found literally dozens of forums with people with the same problem I had, plus others with a host of other problems. I got more help from strangers then I did the people at Pendulo Studios. I finally took the game back to the Virgin Megastore where I bought it and exchanged it for another game.

I'm not even going to take the time to tell you about the game, because I don't want you to get involved as I did, and then disappointed. The only way I was able to finish the game was someone from one of the forums sent me a file after the point where the game crashed. By that time it didn't matter though. I was too worried about whether something else was going to go wrong to enjoy it. I was tired, frustrated, felt cheated and ignored and I just wanted to see what happened at the end. The joy was gone.

There are other strategy games out there with fewer problems. My advice, buy one of those.


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