Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle

The Good
Nice, clear, colourful 2 dimensional visuals

The Bad
It tries to relive the point n click adventure genre that once dominated the nineties...

The Bottom Line
..unfortunately it fails. Let me explain. R2TDOTT tries to mimic old point n click games and adds a little flavour to it. The genre is long gone since they eliminated the complete command system such as "pick up" or "give to" and adapted all commands under a single mouse click. What made this genre so great was that you could visit almost a hundred screens at a time, combine a full inventory of red herrings and lots of objects, and then I really mean lots. And you were practically clueless because of all the possibilities.

Here it feels like the complete opposite, except for the addition of zillions of bogus dialogues. There is very little you can do, there aren't that many screens you can explore because you are often stuck to a small location and Brian Basco doesn't mention much unless you are supposed to interact with certain objects. The way you work yourself through the chapters is pretty embarrassing, I mean for example.. how many times can you use soldier O'Connor or the Lemur as a solution to just about everything??

You know what's a big problem with this game? For most of the time, it feels like watching a movie more than playing a game. There are ginormous cut scenes that you just can't click away, why not shut up and let me play? Or at least let me skip them. If I wanted to watch an animated movie, i'd pick up the incredibles or something like that. But no, I purchased a game so please, I want to play!

The story is pretty forgettable too. Again they borrowed too much from Indiana Jones cliches such as discovering the mysteries of old artifacts and traveling around the planet and the way Brian can escape from his foes is so fictional that I rather take every James Bond installment for real. The way you must trigger certain events is pretty stupid too, you can't do action x unless you have mentioned something about topic y; this makes the game extremely linear. And the way Brian always has to say something smart every time he does something really annoys me.

Two dimensional graphics look awesome, but the animation simply isn't. For example, Colonel Kordsmeier talks like a sock puppet and sound like a drunk pirate. Voice acting could have been done a lot better though, since you are obliged to listen to a million lines of nonsense.

It never gave me a pleasant feeling and after a while I was playing against my will. After the fourth chapter I couldn't bear it anymore and I quit playing. I can enjoy a lot of old point n click games, but this one simply fails to deliver.