 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Pendulo Studios |
| Publisher: | CDV | |
| Genre: | Adventure | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | · P4 1.6GHz/AMD Athlon XP 1600 · 256MB RAM · Nvidia GeForce 2 MX/ATI Radeon 7000 or higher · 7GB hard drive space |
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| Buy Now: |   |
I’ve always been a fan of the point-and-click adventure genre, which is home to some of the funniest games in history, generally interesting stories and internal logic totally different from anything else on the market. It’s just that I arrived on the scene at a bad time. You see, about the time I became interested in games with more storyline than what you’ll find in the average Mario game, the RPG genre really began to take off. As a result, console and PC RPGs kept my adventure-seeking soul satisfied throughout the PlayStation era, with only an occasional foray into the adventure genre with the likes of Discworld, King’s Quest, and Myst. Like many gamers, over time my interest in the genre faded away with the rise of 3D gaming, although I always kept an eye on it and stockpiled several games for future play including The Longest Journey and Syberia (both of which I still plan on playing someday!).
A few years ago, after several down years that had many experts predicting the “death” of the genre, adventure gaming began to make a comeback, with Telltale Games’ episodic Sam & Max revival being perhaps its biggest success story. I’d become interested in finally playing adventure games again too, but I didn’t want to jump back into the genre with an established franchise like Sam & Max, where I might not have the background on the characters to enjoy it properly. Then a month or so ago new screenshots for Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle caught my eye, and immediately I decided that it would mark my return to the genre.
Of course, the one problem with my plan is that this is actually not the first Runaway title, since developer Pendulo Studios also released Runaway: A Road Adventure back in 2003. I didn’t know that when I made up my mind to play this one however and fortunately no prior knowledge of that game is required to enjoy this one. The Dream of the Turtle does once again star Brian Basco, this time given an extreme makeover from geek to chic to adapt to his more exotic surroundings, and many of the characters from the first game do make return appearances in supporting roles. However, the storyline itself is not related in any meaningful way.
The cast of characters is a diverse one, although virtually everyone falls into one of several stereotypes. There’s the super-hacker girl, the cold as ice villainess, the cigar-munching general, the dopey private, the weed-smoking Jamaican, etc. Despite that and some stiff script writing, they still manage to be mostly interesting regardless. As I alluded to before, the returning characters are presented in such a way that you don’t need to know anything about their prior adventures, although it was obvious to me that playing the first Runaway before would’ve allowed me to better understand their interactions with each other. Fortunately this game does include a handy recap of A Road Adventure anyway, but it’s no substitute for actually playing it.
I don’t want to get into the storyline too much due to potential spoilers, but fortunately for first-timers (and perhaps frustratingly for returning fans), as I mentioned before it’s completely independent from the first game. Brian and girlfriend Gina are vacationing in Hawaii, and decide to take a day trip to a neighboring island. The rickety plane they’re in soon crashes however, so to save Gina’s life Brian pushes her out with the last remaining parachute during the plane’s descent. After crash-landing in the jungle, Brian begins his search for her, and finds plenty of puzzles to solve along the way, gets wrapped up in a larger conspiracy involving the US military, utilizes mysterious artifacts, chats with local natives, encounters wacky situations (drunken lemurs anyone?), and more. The storyline itself is entertaining, even though the ending leaves much to be desired in a Halo 2 kind of way.
Posted: 2007-03-14 15:07:46 PST