Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle - IBM PC / Wii / Nintendo DS (2007)
American Cover |
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle |
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle |
From the beginning, Runaway 2 is a lot more sure of its tone than the first game. When divorced from all of the murdering gangsters, the story is free to be a lot sillier, and the introduction of aliens allows for a much more off-the-wall plot, especially once you find an artifact that can bend space and time. The practical downside is the return of Joshua, an aggravating non-player character from the first game who's been promoted to supporting role. He's had close contact with the aliens and joins your quest, but does little other being really annoying and cause lots of annoying problems for Brian. It's a terrible way to motivate players to solve puzzles when you really want to strangle the dope who keeps getting you into mess after mess. His catchphrase - "Boggles the mind!" - is grating enough the first time you hear it, much less repeatedly.
A few other characters from the first game, including Sushi and her pals Saturn and Rutger, make a return appearance, and they still hard to elicit laughs while failing completely. Slightly more amusing are a few of the new characters, including the overtly slutty barmaid Lokelani, who inappropriately regales Brian with stories of her many, many, many ex-boyfriends, and a dim-witted Army sergeant named O'Conner, who can be manipulated in a number of amusing ways. The final chapter is a dream sequence that takes place onboard a 15th century ship, and has more than its fair share of Monkey Island references. One of the first "characters" you meet is an alcoholic lemur, who, quite frankly, should've had a more starring role.
Runaway 2 also occasionally does some clever things with the hotspot descriptions. At one point you need to break off part of a wooden window sill. When you go back later and try to fix it, instead of saying something like "Use Board on Window", the action text reads "Restore Board's Lost Honor By Returning Its Status As a Window Sill". The game really could've used more clever bits like this! All in all, it's certainly a step up from its predecessor, but the story is still filled with questionable moments. Why, for example, does Brian stop to hook up with the bikini-clad waitress? Doesn't that sort of undermine his whole quest to find Gina if he's just going to shack up with some random floozie? And while it's perhaps a bit much for a Spanish studio to understand American political correctness, they should have maybe realized that a white dude wearing makeup to dress up as a black man is perceived as fairly offensive.
But the larger problem is that this is really only one half of a game. While it's still six chapters long, it ends up on a cliffhanger, and almost nothing is resolved, so some aspects really stick out. Considering she's featured right on the cover, it's weird how little of a role Gina plays. She's in the intro, and pops up a few times in later cutscenes, but beyond that, she's totally absent. And the story goes through the trouble to introduce us to Tarantula, a scorchingly hot assassin who disposes of her targets with deadly spiders, but outside of killing a few henchmen off screen, she doesn't really do much of anything. It doesn't help that the plot is a bit overly elaborate without being interesting. Sure, the whole alien case ties in with a Spanish conquistador, but it's a plot thread that's given way more exposure than it deserves. And the dialogue still hasn't improved from its predecessor, leaving for longer, mostly useless bits of conversations and cutscenes.
While the narrative sees some slight improvements, the rest of the game doesn't. Brian still refuses to pick up stuff unless you're previously discovered a reason to, and the hotspots are still too difficult to find. The puzzles, for the most part, aren't as overtly stupid as the first game, but there are still some real headspinners. At one point, you need to get an item from Saturn, one of Sushi's stupid friends. He's an inventor, and discusses how he wants to create a tool that makes people eat slower. (How odd.) To solve this, you need to empty a few wine jugs, fill them with sand, tie them together, and stick them on to a trident you nab from a statue. Thus, you have a large scale model of a "time fork", a fork with an hourglass attached to it. The game almost seems to acknowledge how dumb this is, but it's still quite inane.
The graphics, of course, still look gorgeous. Since a good chunk of the game takes place on gorgeous tropical islands before moving to the Alaskan mountains, and eventually out into the ocean, there's much more room for the artistry to shine. The character design style is similar, although the models are much improved over the first game, and there's far less awkwardly lip synched close-ups. Brian's received a huge makeover and now looks like a surfer dude, although he still talks and acts the same as before. The new title song sounds like an awful boy band ripoff, although Vera Dominguez still provides a few other decent songs for the soundtrack.
While Runaway 2 is an improvement in many ways, it still falls prey from most of the troubles of its predecessor, and haters of the first will likely not be convinced. Those that enjoyed the first game will obviously find more of the same, although some have voiced their displeasure over the prevalent science fiction aspects. No one will be pleased by the ending, although at least the third game fills together everything nicely.
In addition to the standard PC release, Runaway 2 was also released on the Nintendo DS. Obviously the backgrounds and characters needed to be greatly resized to fit onto the portable screen, so the visuals lose much of their luster. Many of the movies are still present, although they've been heavily chopped up and compressed. There's no voice acting, either, leaving its not-so-witty dialogue to be conveyed solely through text. The touch screen interface works well enough, though, since it zooms on whenever you point at something with the stylus, and the hotspot indicator is a godsend. A Wii version was also released in 2009, which features Wii remote pointer controls and an online help system similar to the one implemented in the third Runaway game.
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle
Runaway: A Twist of Fate - IBM PC / Nintendo DS (2009)
European Cover
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
The whole bit is actually a very clever way to structure the game, since it provides more motivation for the player to move forward, and it's much more involving than its predecessors. But one can't help but feel as if the developers lost interest in the supernatural setting of The Dream of the Turtle, and wanted to do something different. A Twist of Fate feels closer in tone to the first game, being more of a darker murder mystery, right down to the assassins that are tracking down the heroes, and the only supernatural stuff are the scenes that deals directly with its predecessor. Despite the fact that the aliens are the driving factor of the plot, you never directly interact with any of them, and they only show up in a few cutscenes. It doesn't negatively affect the storytelling, it's just strange. Thankfully, it resolves all of the dangling ends from its predecessor, especially Tarantula, who plays a pretty strong role in this game. A Twist of Fate also finally fleshes out Gina, and the chapters switch back and forth between her stories and the flashbacks of Brian escaping from the sanitarium. It's great that she's actually more than a damsel-in-distress here, although other than a few references to her pole-dancing past, she's actually not that much more different than a female version of Brian.
It's not only the narrative that's improved - Pendulo has really taken into account the criticisms of the earlier games, and fixed a lot of the problems. The puzzles are still occasionally a bit off, but they are easier, and at least a bit funnier. One of the first tasks Gina has to do is translate a Swedish instruction manual. (Never mind that the IKEA-style pamphlets that are being parodied are entirely illustrated, but let's roll with it.) The first chapter takes place entirely in a graveyard, and you can't leave. As Gina determines, the only way to solve this puzzle is to find a Swedish person buried somewhere in the graveyard, get the local paranormal expert to channel his spirit, and get the soul of the dead to translate it. That's the sort of bizarrely overcomplicated situation that the series has devolved into in many occasions - except when you actually convince the spirit medium to conduct her ceremony, she realizes that it fails, pulls out a Swedish-to-English dictionary and translates it herself to cover her ass. Hey, there's an actual punchline in there! The ridiculous puzzles in Lucasarts games tended to be forgivable because their solutions were funny, and Pendulo finally picked up on that. Furthermore, it's not even a particular difficult puzzle, because Gina comes to most of the conclusions herself just by looking around, gently guiding the player to the correct solution. It's certainly much better than the time fork.
Indeed, the whole game is much more user-friendly. The new hotspot indicator is a very welcome addition, and there's an online hint function for pretty much every step of the way. Here, Joshua is confined to the role of a customer service representative deep in the bowels of Pendulo Studios, and he even offers some (fictional?) stories about the game's development. Otherwise, he doesn't play any real role in the central plot, which is definitely for the game's betterment.
The writing as a whole has improved a bit too. It still occasionally tries to be humorous and does a bad job of it, but pretty much most of the annoying aspects of the original are gone. The new wacky sidekick this time is Gabbo, Brian's buddy from the insane asylum who looks more than a bit like Steve Buscemi. Making him randomly shout "Banana!" at the end of every other sentence isn't funny, but his references and parodies of action movie heroes proves a bit more endearing, and he's used sparsely throughout the story. Brian's other buddies at the sanitarium, and the ways to manipulate them, prove slightly amusing too. The voice acting cast is totally new, and while fans of the older games might be put off by the change, the new voices for Brian and Gina are definitely an improvement. Although the game is still six chapters long, it's fairly short, and given that the puzzles aren't as obtuse as the previous games, they go by pretty quickly. The upside is that it's much better paced, and feels less tedious as a whole.
The graphics are technically on the same level as The Dream of the Turtle, and so the game still looks quite good. Given that a good chunk of the game is set in insane asylums and dirty back alleys, it's not quite as scenic as the jungles and deserts from the previous games, but it manages to be attractive nonetheless. Vera Dominguez returns to sing the title song too, which again, is quite catchy.
Although A Twist of Fate is hardly a classic, it's still the best of the trilogy. The puzzles aren't as frustrating, the characters are actually likable, the plot's more engrossing, and the dialogue, while still not fantastic, isn't nearly as awkward. Despite being the third in a trilogy, and heavily connected to its predecessor (although not initially), it's probably the best place for newbie to jump in, because the quality really is quite a bit higher.
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Adventure Gamers - Reviews of the first, second, and third games. They are much kinder.
Runaway: A Twist of Fate
Runaway found enough success that Pendulo released a follow-up about five years later, subtitled "Dream of the Turtle". This time, the frame story involves Brian instant messaging Sushi, as he finds himself in yet another scrape. Brian and Gina are now an official couple, and head off to beautiful Hawaii to catch some rays. Unfortunately, an ill-advised airplane tour goes awry, with Brian giving Gina the only onboard parachute to jump out the door, while trying to crashland safely. Trying to recover Gina turns out to be much harder than he anticipated, seeing how the location they've happened across, Mala Island, is occupied by the United States military. Led by the cigar-chomping Colonel Kordsmeier, he's not up to letting civilians waltz through his encampment, which just so happens to be where Gina landed. After cavorting with the locals and disguising himself as a professor to infiltrate a series of ruins, Brian learns that the army is guarding the remnants of a crashed UFO, complete with outer stellar life forms. In the faced of mad military generals and cold blooded assassins, Brian must not only rescue Gina, but discover the secret behind the aliens, and the mysterious element called Trantonite.
Pendulo followed up with the third (and presumably final) Runaway game, released in late 2009. Rather than picking up immediately where its predecessor left off, Runaway: A Twist of Fate intentionally skips over it and begins on a seemingly unrelated note. Brian (who's been again redesigned to look a bit more thuggish) is held on trial for the murder the Colonel Kordsmeier, the army chief on Mala Island for the first game. He's a bit of a wreck, with no memories of what happened directly after the events of the second game, so he's checked into an mental institution, where he's killed under mysterious circumstances. But not really, of course - it's just a cover so Brian can escape and figure out who framed him. Meanwhile, Gina, who apparently escaped unharmed, begins an adventure of her own to discover what happened to Brian, and ends up investigating a different, although related murder. She has no memory of the past either, and a good chunk of the game involves both of them piecing together parts of the puzzle.
Links
Runaway - Official Website The PR speak is pretty amusing.
