Escaping the mafia, a review of Runaway
Introduction
When Runaway, a road adventure was lying in my mail one day, I was pleasantly surprised after the long wait and pushing of release dates. When you put the cd into the drive and begin to play the game you will meet the face of Brian Basco, a student of Physics that has been accepted to do his doctoral studies for a famous professor in the Physics Department at the University of Berkeley. He has forgotten to get a book that he had ordered so he decided to go into Manhattan to get it. On the way there he ran over a girl, though she wasn't badly injured and he takes her to the hospital where she tells a strange tale about her going to be killed by mafia thugs. Together they will go on a trip around USA to unravel a mystery and for Brian to understand this girl who he find mesmerising.
Game play
The game features a traditional point and click interface. You move your mouse where you want it and chooses from some actions to do on the selected objects. When you talk to somebody you get a set of talk options and if you should forget what you talked about you can most of the time go back and ask the same questions again. And don't forget to go back to talk to people several times, they might get more to say after you've done other things!
The game is not hard, but not very easy either. The puzzles you come across are well made and you do not feel that you should combine random object with another random object without any connection to the result of the combination. There are times though, when you feel that what you do has little relation to what you want to accomplish. With the exception of chapter one, the game tells you what your objectives are, so you don't feel totally lost in what you should do.
The in-game graphics is nicely hand drawn in colourful cartoon style. The cut-scenes consists of pre-rendered 3D video and have a little different look than the normal play. I think it would have looked better if they had stuck to the hand drawn in the cut-scenes, it would have made for a much more consistent graphic presentation. But overall it is a very well done work and you always have some rich backgrounds and interesting details to look at.
Music isn't quite as good as the graphics. It doesn't disturb you, but most of the time it does nothing more either. There are a couple of tunes (the main theme specifically) that are nice, but the rest you will have forgotten the moment you leave that part of the game. Music should be a tool to enhance the game play so you feel immersed instead of just being something that sounds in the background. Also it is important to overuse the music so it feels repetitive. While Runaway doesn't overuse the music, it certainly doesn't enhance the game play. Other types sounds are of fairly good quality.
In difference to some of the recent adventure games, Runaway features some rather good voice acting. And to top that, they actually have lip synchronisation that works well. It isn't perfect, but well above par.
Conclusions
The atmosphere of Runaway is rather relaxed and you don't feel that the overall story is very important to the game, which it isn't. You shouldn't expect any deep characters or really interesting thoughts about life. What you do get is a rather neatly wrapped up story that holds enough interest for you to go on playing but not much more. It is good enough for you to be entertained many hours and you happily goes on to experience the different characters and locations in the game. It is quite enjoying playing the game nevertheless and you can always relax and examine the world without fear of biting the grass and having to start over. Instead you can enjoy the quiet humour, which is done with warmth and well carried out.
It is always possible to ask more of a game, but this game does what it intends to do rather well, namely making you have a pleasant time. If you enjoy adventure games, you will probably want to buy the game. The long wait for the game was worth it.