It might not blur genres or do anything never seen before but it's a solid adventure game.
Good Points:
Good story.
Great graphics.
Decent sound.
Superb voice acting.
Good control scheme.
Bad Points:
Some obscure puzzles.
Kinda short.
The story starts out with Brian Basco a shy college leaver on his way Berkley to continue his studies in physics. On his way he runs into a beautiful damsel in distress called Gina and of course he decides to help her. Only problem is trouble seems to follow her in the form of two Mafia goons. What do they want? Well play the game and find out. :P
Runaway is basically an inventory based point and click adventure. You have to meticulously look at every area to find items that can be used to solve the many puzzles in the game. For example use this item, combine it with this other item and use it at this spot. This style of game play is nothing new but Runaway does it well.
Runaway has great hand drawn backgrounds that remind me of those earlier classic adventure games. The character art is in superb CG that really looks the part and fits seamlessly with the backgrounds.
The sounds in the game are of decent enough quality, there's just not that many of them.
I'm a person who can appreciate decent voice acting and Runaway has some superb voice acting in it. The main characters are flawless and most of the wacky characters you'll find having good voice acting as well. I would have liked to have seen some more humour in the story but at least there's humour in it.
Every adventure game needs a decent control scheme and Runaway has that. Just like the adventure games of old the cursor is context sensitive, click a spot on the ground to move there, move your mouse over an item and a magnifying glass will let you examine it. The inventory can be accessed by hitting tab or moving the cursor to the top of the screen. This control scheme is nothing new but it really helps speed things along and an adventure game novice could pick them up in seconds.
Some of the puzzles are a little bit on the obscure side I can't really explain without spoiling a puzzle or to but needless to say you might get stuck on them.
The game seems a little bit short to me but that could be just me. It took me about ten hours on my first play through and i'm not an adventure game expert. There just seemed to be more that could have been included.
I've loved some of the classic point and click adventure games and i've hated some as well. The graphics, story and it's wacky characters make this game one to love.
Runaway might not blur genres or do anything never seen before but it's a solid adventure game. Buy it!
Review system: QX6850 Extreme (3.0GHz Quad Core), 4GB RAM, 768MB Geforce 8800GTX, SB Audigy 2 ZS, WIN XP SP2.