[Bastich]

This is my first attempt at a review. I'll probably screw it up.

Runaway: A Road Adventure

Story: 75%

The story of Runaway is decidedly average. I found myself neither liking nor disliking it. There were some rather interesting characters in it, but it felt a bit uninspired overall. I'm going to refrain on the details of the story so as not to ruin it for those who have yet to play it. There is a blurb on the game box anyway...

Graphics: 90%

The increased resolution of 1024x768 made a huge difference on the level of detail I was used to in adventure games. The backgrounds were very well drawn and crisp because of it. Character design was pretty good too. This was the closest anyone has come to creating that feeling of playing a cartoon visually. The anti-aliasing went a long way towards immersing the characters in the background. Normally, the jaggies make it oh so clear it is an overlay. The biggest negative is in the cut-scene videos. The compression really blurred out the details and caused a huge contrast compared to in-game graphics, and since the drawing wasn't really any better in the cut-scenes it detracted from the overall sense of quality.

Sound: 85%

The voice acting was a mixed bag but mostly favorable. The thugs were acted out very well for instance and were perfect cliches, but Rutger was an awful Jamaican imitation, and I still can't figure out what Susan was supposed to be. Her annoying screech was like a poorly done imitation of Roseanne or something. Brian's voice reminded me of a poor version of John Candy's voice acting in Heavy Metal. He didn't really bother me too much, but could have been better. The sound effects were rather minimal, but nothing jumped out as being good or bad. The opening music, while not to my taste, was professionally done and the in-game music was rather forgettable overall. There were lip synching issues, but I don't know whether it was a translation/dubbing issue since it was a foreign made game or just laziness so I will remain neutral on it. Overall, sound quality was above average.

Difficulty: 60%

This gets a low score for several reasons. The overwhelming majority of puzzles in the game were just too easy and logical. You usually knew what to do well before you could do it. So you would think that it is an easy game? Nope. In order to make your blood pressure escalate, the game is about as linear as it can get. If you miss something, you are stuck right then and there with nothing to do but search for that "needle in the haystack." And believe me, when I say needle in the haystack I mean it. Some items are devilishly hard to find, meaning that even though you know exactly what you need to do to advance, it matters not, as you don't have the materials to do so. I needed one hint from UHS and one spoiler to finish the game. The first was an extremely illogical puzzle I would never have figured out, and the latter I had to get the complete answer on because I had missed an item and needed to find out where that object was located. Overall, the difficulty was only slightly above average, but I am marking them down because the difficulty was caused for the wrong reasons. Some of the puzzles were also very tired cliches that should be put to rest.

Implementation: 40%

Under implementation falls things like bugs, stability, interface, etc. This was where I had the biggest problems with this game. Throughout the entire game, I had screeching/popping sounds coming from my speakers in one second intervals, usually for 5 consecutive seconds spaced apart by about 5-10 seconds each. The overall effect of those sounds was akin to sticking an ice pick in your ear that had had the point broken off and banging on it with a hammer every second as described above. I tried every possible thing I could to resolve the issue, including upgrading my sound drivers and changing the acceleration settings. Nothing worked. Seeing as I own an Audigy 2, which last time I checked was made by a company that has, how shall I say, a slight market presence in the industry, you would think it would be tested under multiple OS versions for this game by the developers. In my searches on the Internet I saw others with the problem, but no solution. As a result, I frequently turned off the volume while playing the game. I have no such problems in any other game. OTOH, the game was very solid and never crashed once on me. The initial screen at load-up after playing a while was a bit weird as all you can see is the choice to start a specific chapter. You have to move over the the hot-spot up top to get to the load game screen. It should be the other way around and have the chapter loads in the options screen and the option to load on the main screen. One annoying thing was that the cursor icons cycle when you move over a hotspot to move to a new area. In other words, the examine cursor always flashed by as you moved to such a hot-spot, making you think there was an object near there when there wasn't. When you have resorted to pixel hunting, this is annoying as you don't know if you are missing something or not. Also, the game doesn't disable monitor power saving, so my monitor turned off on me during some of the cut-scenes.

Overall: 70% (Average of above)

Note: If it wasn't for the sound bug, implementation would have gotten an 85, making the overall a 79%.

Review System Specs:
P4 2.8Ghz (E7205 chipset)
1GB ECC Ram
Adaptec 19160 SCSI Controller
2 Cheetah 15k SCSI HDs
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Cat 3.8)
Audigy 2 Platinum (latest EAX4 drivers)
Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 22" Monitor (CRT)
Windows 2000 SP4 (Direct X 9.0b)

[Garyos]

Nice review. I like it when there are clear categories, so I can look for specific information about the game much easier. And thanks for not mentioning the plot, that gets really tiring to read about after a while....

One thing:

Originally Posted by Bastich

Overall: 70% (Average of above)

Is averaging the score wise? That means you think stuff like the sound is exactly as important as the story. You should have less specific categories, IMHO.

[eriq]

Runaway runaway runaway...

I have an Audigy 2 and didn't have that problem. Weird.

I did, however, have a problem with the puzzles in Runaway. Many of them were just silly and out of place.

But those graphics.... sweeeeet. Smooth as silk!

I can't wait to see what the Runaway team comes up with next. I know Runaway 2 will be unveiled at some point. Hopefully they will have solved some of these issues because they're a very talented crew of artists.

[Bastich]

Originally Posted by Garyos

Is averaging the score wise? That means you think stuff like the sound is exactly as important as the story. You should have less specific categories, IMHO.

It probably isn't perfect, but with the exception of implementation, I do think that the other 4 categories are relatively equal in a modern game. If a game has great voice acting, but a cliched story, it can make a huge difference in the quality of the game for me. And if the story is good, but VA is awful, it drags the game down. Implementation, I admit, only exists to rip on game bugs, crashes, and poor interfaces. It is basically a freebie if everything works as it is supposed to, so it wouldn't usually affect the score that much.

[Bastich]

Originally Posted by eriq

Runaway runaway runaway...

I have an Audigy 2 and didn't have that problem. Weird.

I did, however, have a problem with the puzzles in Runaway. Many of them were just silly and out of place.

But those graphics.... sweeeeet. Smooth as silk!

I can't wait to see what the Runaway team comes up with next. I know Runaway 2 will be unveiled at some point. Hopefully they will have solved some of these issues because they're a very talented crew of artists.

That is why I gave the score without the sound problem afterwards. I realize that most people probably won't experience it.

I agree that there is great potential for Runaway 2. A better story and puzzles and they could make a really good game. The engine is great looking...

[Bastich]

This just an update that the final score for this game should be the 79% I referenced in my conclusion.

My sound card spiraled to its death after playing this game and I have since replaced it. I re-installed the game with my new soundcard (Audigy 2 ZS) and there were no sound issues at all.

Now the question is, WHY did the card have its first problems with Runaway? Is there a connection? LOL! Just kidding...

[fov]

i'm playing this game right now. i'm in chapter six (somewhat stuck, but i already got a hint today for something i should have been able to figure out on my own, so i'm giving it some time...) i agree with most of what you've said in this review - just wanted to comment on the story. while i agree the story itself isn't particuarly innovative, these guys deserve real credit for some of its execution. they've taken risks that i can't remember seeing in any other game (such as rutger's greenhouse and the drag queens...)

funny what you said about the lip synching, because it seems fine to me. i keep looking for examples of it screwing up (esp. in the closeups of brian at the beginning of each chapter) and it seems right on. i was surprised by this since the game wasn't originally released in english - i was wondering if the engine had some kind of lip synching capability...

-emily

[Bastich]

Originally Posted by fov

i'm playing this game right now. i'm in chapter six (somewhat stuck, but i already got a hint today for something i should have been able to figure out on my own, so i'm giving it some time...) i agree with most of what you've said in this review - just wanted to comment on the story. while i agree the story itself isn't particuarly innovative, these guys deserve real credit for some of its execution. they've taken risks that i can't remember seeing in any other game (such as rutger's greenhouse and the drag queens...)

Point taken, but I guess it wasn't a big deal to me because other games such as RPGs, do risky things like that all the time.

funny what you said about the lip synching, because it seems fine to me. i keep looking for examples of it screwing up (esp. in the closeups of brian at the beginning of each chapter) and it seems right on. i was surprised by this since the game wasn't originally released in english - i was wondering if the engine had some kind of lip synching capability...

It isn't always a matter of the lips starting and stopping in synch with the sound, but whether the lips match the words themselves. I particularly remember a closeup of Gina talking where her mouth just opened and closed in a repeated animation that wasn't in synch with the cadence of her speech. I am probably just being picky though...