Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5393 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: FHI
• Released on: 2007-03-09
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Uh Oh! Gina's got herself into a terribly sticky situation. Some guy has flipped her out of a hydroplane at 3000 feet above Mala, a miniscule island with a lake containing a myriad of secrets about the mysterious past of our planet and maybe even our future.

Pendulo Studios bring the sequel to the 600,000 unit selling Runaway: Road Adventure to the UK, where players can join Brian and Gina once again in their latest point and click adventure. Travel to all four corners of the globe in this exciting and humorous adventure for PC. With its distinctive visuals, original soundtrack and superb script, gamers will adore the adventure which awaits.

Features:

• A great adventure game with excellent production, marvellous scenario, ever present humour and amazing puzzles.
• Up to 100 locations from all four corners of the world, a feast for the eyes to be discovered.
• More than 30 3D characters with an appealing cartoon appearance bringing together 2D and 3D in a totally new way.
• New game engine with 3D real time special effects: light, atmospheric effects, footprints, camera changes, panoramic views
• High quality 5.1 sound. An excellent soundtrack including songs and instrumentals. Voice acting provided by professional actors.
• More than an hour of amazing cartoon sequences to underpin the plot, its surprise developments and many comic moments.

Customer Reviews

Decent effort
Runaway 2: Dream of the Turtle is the sequel to the largely critically acclaimed Runaway A road adventure, which turned out to be one of the most enjoyable adventure games of recent years. It had an engaging storyline, some clever puzzles and an assortment of interesting, offbeat characters. Spanish developer Pendulo Studios has taken four years to try and recreate that same level of achievement with this offering. Did they succeed? Well, not quite. Starting out with a plane ride in Hawaii, Brian Basco and Gina Timmins, the main protagonists from the first game, find themselves in a spot of bother which, surprise, leads to Gina being placed in a dangerous predicament. Naturally, Brian won't tolerate this situation and sets out on another globetrotting adventure to rescue her. For a second time.

Visually, Dream of the Turtle undoubtedly looks good, with detailed, colourful, stylish cartoon backgrounds. From the jungle, to golden beaches to snowy Alaska, exploring these environments is a gratifying and immersive experience. However, the same cannot be said for the soundtrack, a mixture of pop/disco, which sounds like the kind of thing a rejected boy band might churn out. Some of the voice acting is also questionable, with an Australian surfer that just doesn't sound Australian and an embarrassing Japanese scientist as just a couple of examples.

Gameplay is in the traditional point n' click style that inevitably involves pixel hunting, a mouse sweep of the entire screen to seek out objects and clues, it was bad in the first game but has been vastly improved upon this time around. The overwhelming majority of the puzzles are inventory based, with Brian using and combining items for the correct solution. Most of these are entirely logical and easy to work out, there are a couple of exceptions though which could serve as a lesson in obscurantism. Consulting a walkthrough for the answers, I was left wondering, "How on Earth was I supposed to work that out?" But thankfully these are few and far between and can be solved by trial and error if necessary. The difficulty of the puzzles increases the further you progress and on the whole they are quite well balanced.

The story is, as you might expect, a bizarre set of ideas involving aliens, artefacts, ancient civilizations and anything else you care to throw into the mix. The script is littered with references, some subtle, others not so, to other well known adventure games and to popular culture in general. It's generally well written if not a bit convoluted towards the end and although the humour feels a bit forced at times it does manage to raise a good laugh now and then. It's pretty clear as to where the developers got their ideas and inspiration from, and instead of being seen as a derivative work, it should perhaps be looked upon as more of a eulogistic one.

The characters encountered throughout the game are, possibly without exception, ridiculously overblown stereotypes, ranging from a scantily clad barmaid "the man collector", a war obsessed army vet "the corrupt colonel", an evil dame "the venomous beauty" and other such types. Whilst they may accurately portray what they are supposed to be the writers clearly didn't give much thought to originality. Brian's transformation from uber geek in the first game to cool dude in this one actually fits in quite nicely with the new surroundings, and although this may lessen some people's inclination to root for him, he manages to retain a likeable personality throughout.

Dream of the Turtle is a flawed game in many respects, yet there's something about its convivial atmosphere and joyful enthusiasm that draws you in and keeps you playing to its conclusion. Albeit an anticlimactic one. It contains six chapters and takes around ten to fifteen hours to complete depending on your patience/frustration threshold.

Is it a return to the halcyon days of LucasArts and Broken Sword adventuring? Absolutely not. But for now this is as close as you're likely to get.

Given how stagnant the adventure genre has become in the past few years, any attempt to revitalise it should be thoroughly commended.

Great game let down by poor ending.
Runaway 2 is much like the first in the series; a good old fashioned point and click adventure with modern graphics, a great story, some funny jokes and fun (if sometimes a little frustrating) game play. The story really does have many twists, and while the game isn't overly challenging, to play it without any hints will take anyone a while.

I do have a gripe with this game though, and that's the ending. I am not going to ruin the game by telling you the story, but it ends seemingly half-way through the story with a 'to be continued'. While the game up to here is quite long, it does leave you a little disappointed. Whats worse is that at the time of writing this review I have been unable to find any details whatsoever about a Runaway 3, let alone a release date.

Should you buy this game? If you bear in mind what I've written above and are okay with a somewhat disappointing ending, Runaway 2 is a great game, and will keep you occupied for a long time. The only other thing I would add is that you should try and play Runaway 1. While Runaway 2 doesn't continue from from that game as much as Runaway 3 would this game, it makes it more enjoyable to know the background of the characters.

Good sequel, but not without it flaws
Having enjoyed the first Runaway game, I was looking forward to the sequel. I even pre-ordered it, such was my excitement(two weeks later and Amazon have already dropped the price).

The game's best features are the attractive graphics, which are fairly consistent throughout, and the fact that there are so few good 2D point-and-click games being made for PC at the moment. Yes, there is some pixel-hunting to be done, but that's the point-and-click genre for you.

The bad points: The translation into English is not perfect, nor is the voice acting. I've seen/heard much worse in other recent games (e.g. Tunguska), but it's still a niggle. The puzzles are far from a revelation; mostly just simple fetch and combine tasks. The game is a bit short and finishes with an annoying "to be continued" ending.

Overall, I'm glad I bought it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a point-and-click fix. Fortunately, Pendulo have released a demo so you can try before you buy.