Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle (PC)

The locations in Runaway 2 are all extremely well detailed; the graphics for the main character and the environments are perfectly suited. I love this new look cell-shading for this kind of game and it works really well. It does have a few problems where you might be looking for an item but you’re not quite sure where to find it, it’s blended in somewhat to the background and doesn’t quite stand out at times.

The level of detail on the characters is great and it’s not surprising the full install is around 5GB considering what’s on offer. There a good feeling of character to the models, the faces and the design are spot on and they remind me of a cartoon style I’ve seen in some of the French animations I’ve viewed in my lifetime. The attention to detail doesn’t stop with the environments and graphics, it continues in the actual animations themselves.

Every character, major or minor is fluidly animated and the game’s cut-scenes are brought to life with a superb attention to motion. There’s some nice direction in both terms of visual scenes and movement, with the action sequences being especially good and nothing feels really jerky or false.

The game also boasts some nice music and sound, there’s a real feeling of theme to the various places that makes me wish there was a stand alone soundtrack that I could pop into my CD player whilst I did some more of my creative writing projects. The OST for the game would be a definite bonus and if anyone knows if there’s one I’d appreciate a heads up on a forum post.

The spot effects are well done, there’s a good use of audio both in terms of sound effects and the various natural environmental sounds. Like flowing rivers and so on, these bring to life the locations nicely. The voice acting isn’t bad, it’s not Oscar winning performances but there are some nice dialogues from the various characters, again the lines are delivered mostly without flaw, though there were some character voices that I felt didn’t really fit or they just grated on my nerves a little too much.

So with a good quality soundtrack, good audio, decent voices and a twisting story that will keep you on your toes the graphical environments and characters of Runaway 2 are brought to life. There shouldn’t be a problem with people getting used to the interface and there’s definitely a lot of quality puzzles that are lurking away in the game waiting to test your brain and cause smoke to pour out of your ears.

I’d say that most people who yearn for the old days of point and click adventure games need to give this one a go, some of the humour might be a little lost but the whole experience is good enough and wrapped around a decent enough story – it makes you want to play to the end and find out what’s going on and why there are certain things involved and so on.

It’s the mark of a good game, not a classic title and certainly not one that claims to re-invent the genre.