Summary
No, this is not "Blade Runner"... and not Tex Murphy.
The Good
The video quality is quite good. Some of the puzzles are nicely designed. The music is okay for the most part.
The Bad
It is hard to believe this game was created by the same company who made the hilarious Gobliins games or the excellent adventure
Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth. The only thing this game shares with "Woodruff" is the very complex puzzle design. Let's start with puzzles, shall we? "Woodruff" was essentially a comic adventure, in the spirit of
Day of the Tentacle, and it was only too clear that such a game would contain lots of hilarious, mind-breaking puzzles. However, "Urban Runner" is supposed to be a serious detective/mystery adventure, set in a realistic environment, something like the Tex Murphy games:
Under a Killing Moon and others. The puzzles in "Under a Killing Moon" were anything but easy (not to mention the almost impossible puzzles of the sequel
Overseer), but the creators of the Tex Murphy series were well aware of the fact, and by providing in-game hints and the possibility to skip some puzzles, solved the problem the best possible way. Whoever wanted to break his head and to solve those puzzles was welcome to do it, whoever wanted small help could use it, and whoever wanted to skip the whole thing also had this possibility. Sometimes I wonder why don't all the game do it in such a simple way... okay, I'll get to the point. There is no way to skip any puzzles in "Urban Runner", and, what's more, the gameplay is largely based upon puzzles. There are no exploring and dialogue, like in Tex Murphy games or the wonderful
Discworld Noir. So you have here a detective/mystery adventure all filled with puzzles a la "Woodruff". And if it were not enough, you can die almost anytime! Don't forget that with all the complexity of the puzzles, you couldn't die in "Woodruff". Explore and manipulate objects at your pleasure, there was no danger. Here, one wrong move could result in death. Not to mention the fact there is a huge amount of timed puzzles.
Actually, if the events themselves were more logical, I wouldn't have made such a fuss about the difficult puzzles. The problem is again the discrepancy between the game's setting and what is actually happening there. If I play a game like
Atlantis III, I expect completely illogical puzzles and a completely illogical flow of events, and the more illogical they are, the more we are drawn into the surreal atmosphere of this game. So I'm not particularly surprised that I had to use quite strange tactics in this game in order to drop a cage on a beast or to escape from a man who pointed a gun at me. In such a fantasy world, everything is possible. But look what we have here, in "Urban Runner". Let me give you just one example of how illogical the whole set of events is. In the beginning of the game, a killer pursues you, and you find a tricky way of knocking him down. So here he lies, unconscious, in front of you. What would be the first thing anybody would do in such a situation? If your guess is "take his weapon away from him", you obviously haven't played "Urban Runner". While the killer is lying unconscious on the floor, you don't even care to take his gun! You, a detective! You, who just solved another tough puzzle, can't even take the damn gun away from him! You just run away, only to let him come to senses, pull out the gun again and run after you!
But all this wouldn't have mattered, were the game itself good. The problem is - it is not. Before criticizing any game that uses live actors, check out this one. I have never seen such a poor usage of live actors in any game - and bear in mind that the technical quality of the FMVs is pretty high, much higher than in
The Beast Within. There is absolutely no feeling of a "cinematic adventure" in this game. The design of the videos is unimpressive, to say the least. The acting is below all other FMV titles known to me. The game sorely lacks atmosphere - if you expect something like
Blade Runner, you will be very disappointed. In fact, the story and the setting of "Urban Runner" seem to be taken from a German or French TV series. The whole game resembles more an episode of a mediocre TV series, and not a movie.
The Bottom Line
Sierra produced three great FMV titles with live actors:
Phantasmagoria,
Puzzle of Flesh, and
The Beast Within. Access produced three amazing FMV titles with live actors:
Under a Killing Moon,
The Pandora Directive, and
Overseer. Westwood produced one fantastic title without live actors, but with a cinematic feeling like few other games:
Blade Runner. Another great cinematic detective/mystery adventure is Psygnosis'
Discworld Noir. "Urban Runner" can not be compared to those masterpieces. It is just a mediocre game.
