Game Reviews

Runaway: A Road Adventure

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Runaway: A Road Adventure

Are you one of the 14,000 people who backed the next Broken Sword adventure on Kickstarter? If so, this old skool point-and-click adventure might keep you occupied while you wait for Revolution's next instalment.

Bulkypix has resurrected Pendulo Studios's 2003 game of the same name for iOS, and its timing could not be better - if only to act as an aperitif for The Serpent's Curse.

Tapping around for an idea

You play as Brian, a student driving across America when a beautiful girl runs blindly into the road and duly bounces off the front of his car.

It transpires that she's running from some mafia hitmen, and soon Brian and the girl, Gina, are quickly caught up in the adventure of a lifetime, with plenty of tapping around indoor scenery for items and puzzles along the way.

Sound familiar? It should do. It hasn't not aged quite as well as the globe-trotting Broken Sword series, however, being stuffed full of Clarissa Explains It All introspective cutaways and songs that sound a lot like Alanis Morrisette but aren't quite.

Despite its early-noughties release, it somehow feels very '90s - an impression not helped by the atrocious lip-synching throughout (it was originally released in Spanish).

In fact, the whole game plays like a badly dubbed telenovela with porn actors. Protagonist and talented physicist Brian walks around with his shirt tucked into his trousers like he's threatening to rip it all off at any instant, and Gina's lack of attire and respect for physics will earn you some interesting looks if you play Runaway on the bus.

Déjà vu

The game unfurls like many a point-and-click adventure before it - and many an iOS port before it too, for that matter. Cursor control has gone in favour of tapping the screen to move and explore, but the puzzles remain the same: poke around in a room until you figure out what combination of items triggers the next sequence.

It's a pity that the game is limited to newer iOS devices - there's nothing especially taxing about the 2D artwork, as pleasant as it is - and if you have the choice you're much better off playing it on an iPhone, because the letterboxed iPad version forces you to stare at the logo throughout.

But these are details. What really matters is the adventure, and it's here that Runaway fails to keep up with the best the point-and-click genre has to offer. It has echoes of Broken Sword, so you might be tempted to pick it up while you wait for Revolution's latest, but you'll be disappointed if you're expecting more than a shallow fling.

Runaway: A Road Adventure

A badly dubbed point-and-click that at least packs the artwork to get you in the mood for the next Broken Sword - but it's not the main event
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