For a few brief years,
starting around 1988, the computer game world seemed to be ruled
by cartoony third-person graphic adventures. Sierra
Online and LucasGames (later LucasArts) were particularly dominant
with a string of popular titles like the King’s Quest, Leisure
Suit Larry and Space Quest series; the Laura Bow and Zak
McCracken games; the Indiana Jones series, Maniac
Mansion, Revenge of the Tentacle,
Sam and Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle, The
Dig, and the Monkey
Island series. And lets not forget AdventureSoft’s Simon
the Sorcerer
games and the insane first two Discworld
games. Perhaps the pinnacle of this tradition are the two superb
Broken Sword
games.

Then in 1992 everything
began to change with the release of Myst.
Suddenly cartoony third person was out, and photo realistic first
person was in. Out with character interaction, in with obtuse mechanical
puzzles set in lovely, lonely environments.

Many adventure game players
have never stopped missing those halcyon days of the cartoon adventures,
and for those stalwart fans I have
very good news. Runaway: A Road Adventure is a complete throwback
to that venerated tradition. It’s a great-looking, mostly 2D,
third person graphic adventure that may make you dizzy with nostalgia.

The game is narrated by
Brian, a young man who’s just graduated
from college and is on his way on a cross-country trip to accept
a prestigious position at Berkeley in California. Before hitting
the road in earnest, he stops in New York to run an errand, and his
life is changed forever. He nearly runs over a beautiful, scantily-clad
woman named Gina, who claims that bad people are after her.

The first interactive
scene takes place in Gina’s hospital
room, where Brian tries to figure out a way to get Gina away from
the murderous thugs who seem to want her dead. From there, the story
is a roller coaster series of locations in the Southwestern United
States.

The best thing about Runaway is the sheer delight at sinking into
the type of adventure game that you really might have thought no
one made anymore. The environments are bright and colorful, the inventory-based
puzzles are diverse and challenging, and the story pretty solid.

The game also has a lovely
technique used for the general game introduction and the introduction
to the individual six chapters. It consists
of the narrator sitting on a deck chair and just telling you part
of the story. It’s such a nice device I can’t believe
I haven’t seen it before. In fact, I’d call the chapter
intros the most elegant I’ve seen in an adventure game since
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon.

In addition, the game
included two things you just don’t see
very much in graphic adventures: drugs and drag queens.

Unfortunately, the game is not all roses.

Like its predecessors
from a decade ago, the game suffers significantly from Pixel Hunt
Disease. You’d better get your mouse hand limbered
up, because you are going to be painting screen after screen with
that cursor looking for that elusive item that the graphics don’t
quite make clear is there.

Many of the puzzles are logical (if you look and listen very carefully,
that is), but several key puzzles suffer from one of two fun-busting
problems: Opaque non-intuitiveness and downright silliness.

There’s one important puzzle in which you’ll do the
right thing, but might not realize that you have to do that same
(multi-step) thing SIX TIMES before the puzzle will be solved. There’s
nothing in the character’s dialog or clues to let you know
this needs to happen.

Even worse, some puzzle
solutions are simply insane. I don’t
know how they make peanut butter in Spain, but I’m pretty sure
it’s not by throwing peanuts and butter into a bucket and MELTING
them. Uh, peanuts don’t melt. And peanut butter doesn’t
contain butter. My favorite has to be when the game requires you
to add water to gasoline to “dilute it.” Right.

Also bringing down the
overall delight factor in the game is the dopey dialog spoken poorly
by a rack of very unfunny characters.
I know this game was translated and localized, but I’m pretty
sure this script wasn’t funny in Spanish, either. The “straight” characters
aren’t bad, and aren’t performed badly. But every single “colorful” character
is almost aggressively unfunny, poorly acted, and just kind of dumb.
The drag queens are a particular disappointment. Stolen from the
hilarious, witty and touching movie “Pricilla, Queen of the
Desert,” these ladies are fun to look at, but don’t have
a good joke (or a well-performed line) between the three of them.

In fact, none of the characters
come close to the sharp satirical humor of a Monkey Island game,
the offbeat and intriguing characters
in The Longest
Journey,
or the melancholy pathos of Syberia.
In fact, every single character in the recent game Ratchet & Clank
is funnier than the funniest character in Runaway, and, uh, Ratchet & Clank
is a platform game.

HOWEVER. As Woody Allen
said, a huge percentage of success is showing up, and you’ve got to give Runaway credit for showing up with
bells on. Despite its problems, it’s lots of fun to play. Maybe
those crazy Spaniards will do better next time.

Be sure to watch the ending
movies. Chuckle at the game’s
dopey grasp of California geography (Berkeley is shown as being across
the Golden Gate Bridge). You keep thinking the game’s over,
and it’s not . . . there’s even a scene after the credits.

As an adventure fan, I
wouldn’t have missed Runaway, and neither
should you.

Final Grade: B-

System Requirements:

• 64 MB RAM
• 8X CD-ROM
• 630 MB disk
  space
• mouse
• sound card
• DirectX
  v8.1

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.