It's a mixed bag that I can only really recommend to old school adventure game aficionados. The puzzles can be pretty lame in their nonsensical logic or the proverbial hunt the pixel game for that one item you are missing to be able to make any headway while searching through several screens worth of pixels... also the story itself is... well amusing if you like cheesy, trite, and hackneyed plots with a supposedly genius protagonist that acts like a moron throughout.

Basically a pretty underwhelming effort that you can skip at your leisure. Give it a go but don't be afraid to just go straight for a walkthrough so it doesn't feel like too much of a waste of time.

Runaway: A Road Adventure is the first game in Runaway series made by Pendulo Studios, back in 2001. It has its ups and downs, coming into a résumé of being cheesy and needlessly complicated with a crude, childish charm on the side. It is only interesting enough for an old school adventure gamer, who wouldn't mind empty character stereotypes.

Let's see... There is an interesting variety of graphic and art display used in this first game; including old school hand drawn cartoons, slightly computer animated skylines, 2D characters wrapped with vibrant colors in gameplay - similar to original Broken Sword series - and creepy plastic 3D models used in between cut scenes. It feels that someone failed to pick a homogenous art style for this game. 2D models + hand drawn cartoons is a great combination which we are already used to from older adventure titles, but 3D models? Well... I personally think the 2D + 3D artwork combination is a tricky one, and it wasn't well produced here. Some of the character designs were okay, but they mostly ended up being exaggerations of stereotypes. Brute and ugly rather than being funny, and character movement animations - especially ones from Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 - were downright spastic.

I don't know a lot about you, but a strong and unique protagonist with well-arranged character is really important in adventure games in my opinion. For the acquired immersion, you have to like the main character, or at least find him/her interesting. Brian Basco was neither likable nor interesting. For a supposed boy genius, he spoke and acted as a real dimwit who ends up becoming a Ken doll stereotype eventually. Gina - the supporting female character - isn't anything interesting or genuine either. She is there to live up to the labeled existence of being an exaggeratedly sexy bimbo.

The scenario is meaninglessly complicated and it seems that our characters have no actual control over any occurrence. On a series of quite random and unfortunate - or amazingly fortunate events - they manage to get by, but there is no exact brilliance to their progress. They always go through any kind of progress through the help of absurdly friendly random individuals with eccentric backgrounds that they meet around. The story itself is so fragmented and scattered, it doesn't really make any sense until the last chapter of the game. During the last chapter, every random plot hook are properly arranged and tidied up by yet another collection of random people - not our protagonist. In all events and occurrences, Brian Basco may be one of the most naive and ridiculously shallow characters in adventures games that I've played so far.

If we are to talk about gameplay, I have to confess that it has a ridiculously slow progressing game play for a ridiculously fast progressing storyline. There is odd repetitions in actions and with the speed Brian moves around, you'd better spare a whole day. It is a killer pixel hunt to collect items, or even notice that certain items are actually collectible. Some item combinations are just fine, the others... well, without a walkthrough I wish utmost patience for you. NPC interactions and dialogues are pretty much straight forward, but even though you'd be pretty confident about what you should do, the game forces you to either confirm that through making Brian realize the needed action, or at least try what you absolutely cannot do first as an elimination process. It ends up being tiresome after a point.

All in all, Runaway: A Road Adventure is nothing miraculous. There is a great selection of adventure games you'd enjoy without a doubt. This is not really one of them if you are not a fan of cheesy character stereotypes and crude elementary level humor. I've been hearing a lot of good things about the other games in the series - especially Runaway 3: A Twist of Fate - so I'll finish the series to get there anyhow. Apparently, story arcs follow each other with references so it is not possible to thoroughly enjoy the last game without playing the prior ones. Take this one if you are curious enough, or wait for my reviews in other titles in the series!

Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page here - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

When I play adventure games, usually I like to play a compelling protagonist, solve ingenius puzzles, and meet a colourful cast of interesting characters. Unfortunately, Runaway fails on all counts, and then finds some more levels to fail on, in case I was not sufficiently put off from it with it's sheer audacious ineptitude alone.

The art, while competent in it's backgrounds and interesting in the execution of the cel-shaded comic style, fell short when rendering the characters, whose bodies float around while their mouths snap into keys, a discordant, stilted animation method that only serves to both highlight the failings of the watery bodies and the limited mouth animations. The character designs ranged from by the numbers boring, to overwhelmingly offensive and reductive. Racist stereotypes pop up again and again, gentle and unassuming, as if the writers thought nothing of their inclusion, with a literally yellow faced asian lady at one juncture, and a Tojo-style bucktooth japanese stereotype popping up later. The game seemed to take great pleasure in exaggerating features that weren't part of the caucasian face. While Brian and Gina were bland to the point of soporific, some of the supporting cast were so caricatured as to make them inhuman. The resulting mashup was incredibly distracting, and often insulting. It didn't fit together well.

The puzzle design was some of the worst I've ever seen - and unquestioned in it's sociopathy. Oftentimes the solution to a puzzle is to destroy some great work of art, or a career, or simply make someone's life worse for Brian's gain. Other puzzles involve leaps of logic so great as to bring into question the world this game was made in. Filling lipstick tubes with gunpowder, for instance, apparently makes for bullets. In what sane universe would this not just melt the lipstick and cause a jam in a gun? And Peanut Butter made by heating butter with some peanuts. Not only do the puzzle solutions often not make sense, but are literally antithetical to the goal you are trying to achieve. Brian will, at times, do something that is counterproductive to his aims for no real reason other than to prolong the game's running time. He is also an incredibly inconsistent hypocrit, refusing to steal some things because "he is a decent guy" and gleefully stealing and destroying other items because "they won't miss it". The amount of unquestioned property damage in this game is staggering. I was actively rooting for something horrible to happen to the protagonist by the end, as he got everything he ever wanted and more, as he complained about being lied to while lying out of his ass at every opportunity, and as he made everyone's lives a living hell while they did nothing but be accomodating to him.

From the very beginning, the insufferable Brian Basco comes across as a bland, entitled dudebro, whose complete disregard for his fellow human beings' safety is only matched by his lack of personality traits. I can only sum him up as some kind of dark, unfathomable void-beast who wants to go to Berkley University. In his quest for getting the female supporting protagonist, Brian poisons, strongarms, and causes the death of all who get in his way. He is unaffected by the death of friends, loved ones, and nothing bad that happens around him ever seems to stick - upon being told to not mourn by a Hopi Ghost, for example, he instantly feels better and snaps back to being the insufferable twit that he normally is.

Mentioning the Hopi, an important point has to be brought up. The Hopi, in the game's setting, appear to be a extinct tribe that have only a presence through spirits and ghosts, when in reality the Hopi are still a political presence in Arizona, with several towns. It reinforces the awful "Native Americans are Already Dead" tropes that resonate throughout media, which is part lie and part incredible racism, of which this game has in spades.

The story is at it's heart, forgettable, but only through Brian Basco's audacious awfulness is it elevated to a travesty. The twist in the plot takes five out of six chapters to come to fruition, and it is such a damp squib of a twist that you question why you even bothered with the game in the first place. The game's setup promises intrigue that the game ultimately does not deliver on. It barely engages more than morbid curiousity, let alone any proper intrigue. The game sets up a mystical element that ultimately only serves to give our hero yet another item and a pat on the back when he loses something. The love interest element is sickeningly underwritten and overemphasised, mainly when our hero reminds the supporting cast, and the player that he is not gay. His love interest spends most of the time unconscious, indisposed, or absent. What spark they could have had is never shown on screen, just that he thinks she is beautiful, and ergo he needs her. And she wants him for an unknown reason, probably because he hit her with his car and she needs protection. She is an eternal damsel, and her story is never expanded upon, even though it is far, far more interesting than his,

Describing Runaway as a power fantasy would be completely apt - Brian Basco represents the nadir of the human being, but still gets everything he ever wanted while reassuring himself, and being reassured, that he is the Decent Nice Guy Who Gets The Girl. It is almost sickening how pornographically this game presents us our "hero", in the sense that everything he does brings him everything he ever wanted, he never faces any real, lasting trauma or tragedy. No character development, just a stagnation into the awful person he always was, and will always continue to be.

Runaway is exactly what you should do when faced with this game.

This is the first in three games that form the Runaway series to date. As such it is bound to be potentially less refined than the latter two so there are some issues with it and things that detract from my enjoyment of the game. I hope as the series progresses they get better and better but for now here is my review of the first title in the series...

The first aspect is the art style, it appears cell shaded in format or what I would associate as such and it is an aquired taste as far as artistic styles go...unfortuantly in this specific case it is not a taste that fits well with me. Normally I do not mind cell shaded looking games but this is on the poor quality side where quite often I found myself looking at the shading on the characters and thinking what the hell is wrong with their face or body which maybe okay for a while for the amusment of looking at weird shaded and shaped characters as some times it was just plain freaky looking but kind of wears thin on me after a while.

It comes across as like a premature/immature use of the art style inline with the time period where the game came out which I think was early 90's and it may well be the case that the following games in series matured and refined this art style but that's more related to future reviews of those not this one. However I am sure there are enough screenshots and such online and in the community section for this game here to give you an idea of whether it is an art style you can grin and bare or might enjoy. For me it was the former and for others it may be the latter. The environments on the other hand are not too bad, some are even quite good I feel for the most part but the characters on the other hand are ugh...not to my liking and quite often look very odd or creepy.

The VO work is okay, not amazing but not too bad either. Nothing to write home about though. There were some glitches and bugs I came across when playing, screen freeze couple times and on some occasions glitches relating to the the VO/animations. I thought it is worth mentioning just incase happens to others too. It was not game breaking in the sense I was able to reload from last save and continue but it might be worthwhile if pick up this game to keep saving manually often just in case.

The introduction music track and general theme song Runaway one is catchy and a nice tune. It was a nice enjoyable peice of music but for the rest of the game there is pretty much a lack of music to add to this nice audio start to the game. The puzzles in this adventure game are also not so great in the sense for the most part yes you will be able to proceed without hinderence for a fair amount of the game just by using simple logic...but there are some that defy belief and boggle the mind in a not so good way. You will most likely need to use a guide or walkthrough to solve some just because some defy logic.

I will give just one example so not to spoil things where the game fails in this regard. There is a train and you can add water to the engine boiler by going to and from town, filling up a handheld item with water then back to the train to put it in the boiler. When you add water and check the water level it tells you the same thing each time that the water level is still very low. You can repeat this process over and over and will tell you the same thing and on the fifth or sixth try something will pop out of the chimney that you will need to progress in the game. Now here is the problem. Firstly there is no hint or anything like that letting the player know that he should keep going to and from the town and train adding the water over and over or that anything will happen or that anything should happen. The repeated phrase of still low on water after th first few times most people would stop doing it thinking it serves no purpose since game does not tell you has any purpose at this point. You will reach a point where cannot continue the game until decide to go back to putting water in for no apparent reason.

There are also ones which annoyed me in the sense I had collected items that could solve situations had the game let me combine or use them logically but the player is forced to find a different way not because your way would not work if was allowed but because the game expects you not just to solve the puzzles but to solve them the exact way the developer would solve them and this is very annoying. While there is an element of this in most adventure games, in this one it feels blatent and annoying. When you solve some of these puzzles you may feel like shouting eureka but not because you want to pat yourself on the back for being smart but because you managed to figure out what the hell the developers were thinking when they made that puzzle. I might be sounding harsh but some of these puzzles are simply bad. Not all however are so bad, some are generally okay and while you will come across bad ones there are quite a few logical and non brain exploding puzzles in there too that most people should have no problem with.

The story itself is okay, interesting in parts but average in others. The romance aspect feels very forced and this reflected badly on the characters to me. This game was made in the early 90's though so I never expected it to be up to todays standards in many areas but overall as an adventure game it felt like an average game, with a few very annoying puzzles but with good introduction song and an interesting art style provided the art style does not rub you the wrong way. I can only hope the rest of the series gets better and will be trying those in order as I go along at a later date. I have higher hopes for the rest of the series which were developed about two years apart if I recall, expecting and hoping that they improve with each new one in the series as they learned from their mistakes.

The ending was very predictable, but that is to be sort of expected given it's the first in three games that carry a narrative follow through between them from a timelime and characters perspective. I won't spoil it but it is worth noting that the series is linked in such a way so that while you could start with the second or third game and skip this one, you will not get the full story relating to the characters and and may not understand everything that's going on or why things are the way they are unless play them all in order. It's not as bad as say starting watching the LoTR skipping the first and starting on second film in series instead and wondering what's going on but there is a link between the games in this series so worth keeping that in mind.

Should you buy this? Well depends on what floats you boat but for me this was an average game, nothing making it stand out far enough to scream buy or don't buy... more of a if you are bored, like adventure games but played all the best ones already and need to start playing the average ones before making a start on the worst then this fits in that average catagory. My advice is maybe pick it up during a sale. It's not bad enough that I will say do not buy it, so I will say recommended but only for those who fall into the above catagory I just listed if your anything like me.

If determined to buy an adventure game made by Pendulos Studios I would much rather recommend (The Next Big Thing) game from them which actually is a very good adventure game compared to this one which I consider to be average.

Runaway: A Road Adventure is a point-and-click (P&C) adventure game which, by design, it is no more than your typical P&C game from the ‘90s.

The story centres around Brian Basco, an initially shy and nerdy Physics graduate from New York whose life totally changes the moment he almost runs over an admittedly hot chick, Gina Timmins, with his car. Could this be faith? Taking her quickly to the hospital, Brian soon finds out that the mafia gang is after her as a result of possessing an enigmatic crucifix given by her father which she pledged to protect. From here on out, it is knowable what is about to happen and is already hinted in the title itself: become runaways chased by the mafia whilst trying to decipher the mystery behind the crucifix.

While the set up already sounds painfully cheesy, enough to put it next to your minty collection of B-movies from the ‘80s, the overall story is actually decent for an adventure game once you witness the conclusion at the end. In fact most of the story’s writing is corny, but feels shamelessly light-hearted. Split into six chapters, it becomes evident after the second chapter that the story itself is something which must not be taken too seriously – in a good way. It can be wacky (like some of the extravagant support characters) and ridiculous at times (I lost it at the “abduction” part), weirdly making it a very amusing, yet silly, experience. The story builds up well as the game progress, but loses some steam about the second last chapter. It provides several funny moments, but there will be a debate on whether this is because they are intelligently funny or because they are so bluntly stereotypical, corny and a bit sexist. Kind of like laughing at a joke which seemed good on paper but was abysmally delivered. When the story does get serious, it can feel like you are playing a low-budget Broken Sword game. And there is plenty inspiration taken from the first two Broken Sword games displayed in here.

Runaway: A Road Adventure is possibly one of the hardest adventure games you will ever play when it comes to solving puzzles. This can either turn into one of the most satisfying moments of the day when you singlehandedly discover the solution to a challenging puzzle, or the most induced rage you will ever exhibit. In general, the puzzles are mostly logical and varied especially in the first few chapters. Conversely, they are exceptionally unintuitive and require a lot of pixel-hunting. A lot. This will be the thing which will turn off most people, but if you are patient and like actual challenges, then this will be rewarding because the puzzles are truly enjoyable -- a bit absurd and scientifically inaccurate at times though -- once you realise their solutions. Obviously, there are still some awful puzzles which require a lot of backtracking for instance, mainly in the second last chapter. Honestly, that chapter was not well designed from a puzzle solving point of view. An advice is to have a walkthrough next to you just in case you get completely stuck at any point. Also, minor puzzle spoiler: getting high is a solution to one of the puzzles. Greatest puzzle ever?

The graphics are impressive in respect to the hand-drawn backgrounds, which might be the main reason why anyone would be attracted by this game in the first place. There is a variety of nicely drawn locations the player can visit, although the last three chapters are featured in the same dessert setting, so it can be argued that it loses some of its magic in the second half. Sadly, the animations in this game are subpar. The closer the camera is to a character model, the uglier they get. This ugliness can range from realising how bland the models are to their very static facial movements. Similar moments are also noticeable in many of the game’s CGI cutscenes which can be a bit horrific to watch. For instance, there is a particular animation of Gina crawling on the ground which looks dreadfully creepy. Thus, retrospectively, the animations did not age well. Rewind eleven years back, I would probably have been happy with them.

The voice acting is a mixed bag. It is average at best, but enough not to harm the playtime experience. On the other hand, the more hours you sink into the game the more you will get comfortable hearing the voices. Sadly, that is not applicable for some of the support characters who simply make you beg to turn off the audio completely in an instant. Inevitably there will be two or three characters which turn out to sound annoying, not necessarily because of the voice actor’s capabilities but the way some deliver their lines – intentionally over-the-top. The audio compression is also poor, making the dialogues sound fuzzy at times. And this, if you did not know, is not an adventure game from the mid-‘90s which all sounded as if the voices were recorded in a tin can back then. Frankly, the fuzziness is not distracting at all, but rather noticeable when characters talk. Lastly, the soundtrack is solid, without a disappointing track.

One personal annoyance is Gina’s portrayal and lack of involvement in the game. Most of time she is either unconscious, kept locked as a hostage or unable to move due to injury making her useless in helping Brian in any of his tasks. Honestly, she is a pathetic damsel in distress with some admirable “assets”. Thankfully, there are signs of personality and humanness to her character than it meets the eye by the end of the duo's adventure. Yet, she lacked any solid character development throughout most of the story, giving little reason to feel attached to her as a character.

In conclusion, Runaway: A Road Adventure is an adventure game which you will either love for superbly replicating that old-school and wacky feel of classic adventure games -- or hate for its unintuitive puzzles and low production values in the audio and animation departments in particular. Unlike more modern adventure games with damsels in distress, such as Deponia which shares almost the same critical flaws, Runaway: A Road Adventure has a lot more charm. Maybe because it does not take itself too seriously, just the way Monkey Island was more of a comedy-oriented adventure game (of course, the latter had top-notch production values which outshine Runaway in all aspects). Regardless, while there is a lot of room for improvement, the story alone provides enough inceptive to invest time into this adventure until the end if you like wacky fast-ride adventures.

Play with a guide, or you will go insane. Some of the puzzles are absolutely absurd, but with a guide it becomes hilarious to see what these devs thought of as "logical". The game is at times genuinely charming with its upbeat storytelling and weird characters. Not a masterpiece by any means, but if you like strange janky adventure games made by small but passionate studios, I think this is worth your time!

If The Longest Journey is the death of the classic adventure game, Runaway is the beginning of the real "dark ages" of adventure game design. This is the game that defined pixel hunting with every screen containing at least one hotspot as small as a couple pixels, sometimes next to much larger hotspots just to intentionally obfuscate what you're supposed to interacting with.

The second big flaw is that protagonist Brian exists separate from the player, meaning he won't do anything unless he -- the fictional character -- has a reason to. This results in many frustrating elements where Brian will ignore background details until interacting with it much later after new information is revealed. In the first chapter alone you search an inventory item to receive a new item but you must search it again later to reveal another item despite Brian explicitly saying "there's nothing else useful." This is something even Sierra didn't torture the player with.

Combine this with lots of time wasting tedium -- one "puzzle" involves filling a water boiler but you can only fill up a little at a time asking the player to walk across 8 screens round trip SIX TIMES -- and Runaway represents the worst aspects of the genre. I'm surprised this series has done as well as it has but really it just shows how starved adventure gamers were in 2001 before the new renaissance of the 2010s.

Be thankful for any series that tries to revive the point-and-click adventure genre. Runaway is a couple years old at the time of this writing, but it was still made much after the genre had "died".

But in reality, we know it's not dead and Runaway is a good game in that genre. Not the best, but not subpar at all.

Many crucial items blend with environment and/or are too small to see.
A lot of points can be interacted with only if some mandatory trigger happened.
Also, several nonsensical solutions.

All this makes the game far from the brightest star in the point-and-click genre.
The game is dirt cheap on sale if you want it, but I would rather recommend watching it on youtube.

This is a good point and click adventure. It has small bits that are a bit annoying. For example the protagonist explains every action before doing it and there are several quite illogical puzzles that involve searching randomly through spots that you already 'looted' before. Anyway, the story is interesting and the locations and characters are quite unique. The game still looks very nice and the music is mostly good. Overall a very solid adventure experience :)