Runaway A Road Adventure

by Pendulo

Product Features

• 2D and 3D action adventure game with animation-based style
• Approximately 100 settings and 30 interactive characters
• High-quality stereo sound, an original soundtrack with over 24 songs
• The highest graphic resolution ever used in an adventure game
• For 1 player

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009M6SK
• Item Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: August 18, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,220 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: PC

Runaway: A Road Adventure brings you into a world of danger and deceit, where you'll have to outfightgangsters and outfight capos to stay alive!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 3rd-Person Adventure of the Classic Kind, March 22, 2004

By 

wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Runaway: A Road Adventure (CD-ROM)

_Runaway_ starts with a movie: an attractive young man in a director's chair on a dark stage tells you about the strange turn his life took recently. Brian Basco, you learn, is a brilliant physics student on his way to dream position at UC Berkeley. As he's leaving New York, he remembers he has an errand to run and heads to SoHo. A beautiful woman runs out in front of his car. He takes her to the hospital and tried to continue on his way, but she tells him her life is in danger. Being a kind-hearted soul, he can't just leave her, and soon enough the two of them are on the run.

This is another recent release that I avoided for some time due to various negative reviews. Well, I know everyone can't like everything but seriously! were those reviewers playing the same game? In my experience, _Runaway_ was beautiful, well-plotted, exceptionally acted, humourous and highly entertaining, with an interface that was easy to understand and use. It ran incredibly smoothly--no bugs here!-- and the soundtrack kept me humming long after I was done playing. All in all, a game in the best tradition of 3rd person adventure.

The game was highly linear. In some ways it played more like an interactive movie. There were many cut-scenes, some of them quite long. On the plus side, lots of conversations went along without any participation; it always annoys me when there's a contrived interactive quality to portions of a game that are basically information dumps. Sometimes a character would tell Brian to "Go away and come back in an hour," and instead of wandering around waiting for time to pass, you'd get a little movie where Brian said, "Well, I think an hour has gone by." I like this a lot. On the negative side, you couldn't pick up invetory until you needed it, or at least until you had some clue you needed SOMETHING. So you had to go back to locations quite a bit and keep looking at things to be sure there wasn't anything new. In some games this REALLY bothers me, but in _Runaway_ it didn't so much. I could understand not wanting to carry around fifteen tons of stuff until you had a use for it.

The puzzles were classic inventory/conversation: get information and find what you need to solve a problem. I found that the solutions generally made sense; there were only a few that seemed unthinkably silly or even downright wrong (in terms of real life). There were a lot of multi-part tasks--places where just as you thought you finally had it solved, something else would come up. And there were a couple of pixel hunts. But mostly, the game moved right along.

The characters were wonderful, if somewhat stereotyped. The voice acting was very good; I especially liked the Currandera, Mama Dorita. The main character had a slight tendancy to talk too much, but that was easily overlooked. I thought Brian's development was also well-done. You could see that his experiences were transforming him, but his core personality remained the same.

_Runaway_ took me about 20 hours to complete and I resorted to UHS hints 2 or 3 times (about average for me). I really, really enjoyed it and hope there will be a sequel. If you like the Monkey Island games, you'll like this one.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic style but mediocre gameplay, March 24, 2004

By 

bayou_hannibal "bayou_hannibal" (West Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Runaway: A Road Adventure (CD-ROM)

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.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent adventure game!, October 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Runaway: A Road Adventure (CD-ROM)

I am a huge fan of the Monkey Island series, mostly for the sytle of gameplay, but also for the humor and interesting "twists". Runaway has all of the aspects that I love of that series but with a sytle completely of its own. Runaway takes you on a roller coaster of adventure and suspense, but does it in a supremely crazy and comedic way.

I completely agree with the other reviewers that Runaway should have a "Mature" rating. A few people are killed right in front of you, and there is some mild drug use that is required for the character to complete a puzzle. There are other elements (drag queens, some racy dialogue, and skimpy clothing), but nothing more than what you see on TV.

I really had a lot of fun with this game. I did not realize how much I missed these games until I started playing Runaway. I am definitely hoping for a sequel.

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