Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle

Brilliant story and characters, clever and challenging puzzles and a gripping pace, all presented almost perfectly.

A funny, challenging and very creative adventure title that should have any fan of this classic genre enthralled. The storyline is odd but filled with great characters and twists, the voice acting is second to none, and the design and makeup of the game itself leaves little to be desired.

As point-and-click adventures go, Runaway 2 is a decent effort with good art direction and relatively high production values.

Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle never really lives up to the likes of long-established adventure franchises from LucasArts. Quite simply, they don't make 'em like they used to.

Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle starts off as a great adventure game, with plenty of potential, but basically throws it all away. [June 2007, p.58]

You’re essentially playing an endurance test in videogame form. It’s not terrible, but it is horribly annoying. If you’re aware of that before going in you may just love it. [May 2007, p.121]

A failure. Despite the excellent art, and even ignoring the frustrating puzzles, the biggest problem here lies in a group of obnoxiously stereotypical characters working their way through bad dialogue and a poorly plotted and paced script, topped off with three horrifying words: "To Be Continued..."

Excellent graphics, fun voices, good music but most of all a fun, engaging adventure game. Not too hard though the occasional puzzle makes you look for a walk-through. Frankly, if you like point and click adventuring and nothing's out yet that you're looking for, this is a great little game to snatch up. Its a goodly length, not a short little thing you'll blow through in a night, and very inventive. Grab it!

Awesome start and well made adventure game, the puzzle are fun and interesting, but tend to do a little down with the advance of the history

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Nice continuation from the previous game. Graphically good, but no option to change resolution or go windowed. The story is good and I managed to get halfway through without using a walkthrough. The puzzles aren't that complicated, but almost always, one has to speak to someone or look at something before something else can be picked up. Since Brian usually refuses to interact with these objects at first, one ends up trying most things with most other things over again, or going through dialog trees again to see if one option was missed. I can't decide if the game ends without resolution or is just paced wrongly. Its 10 hour gameplay suggests the latter; the conclusion and explanations are left to the sequel.

I’ll admit, Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle is leaps and bounds ahead of the first game with its animation and backgrounds alone. Characters move much more fluidly and don’t seem like animatronics when there’s up close shots of their faces. The cartoony art style often has characters do wild movements similar to Loony Tunes, which does make for rather hilarious physical comedy. And the backgrounds are simply gorgeous, from the jungles of Hawaii all the way to snowy Alaska. Speaking of the comedy, the game did have some funny moments. Brian found a dog toy in the plane whose gimmick was urinating after being filled with water. It made me chuckle, but you have to admit it was kind of a weird toy. Other humorous moments included some fourth wall breaks, drunken lemurs and a well-meaning but rather dumb soldier, along with other interesting NPCs. Speaking of, there were a lot of new characters to keep track of. Some help Brian on his quest, while others try to stop him from succeeding. These new allies include Lokelani, a bartender who’s had more boyfriends than you can keep track of; Knife, a slightly airheaded surfer who not only has a son but also has a knack for ignoring his problems; and Kai, an older surfer who lost his leg to a shark and perpetuates the ‘lazy mentor’ trope. They all ended up being involved in some of the game’s puzzles. Though I’ll admit that Lokelani’s was a bit annoying, as you had to remember some of her boyfriend’s names while talking to her. There are a lot of dialogue trees to get through with anybody, so you better bring a notepad to jot down the important stuff. There is some clever writing in there, but still. Lokelani was kind of a sore spot for me, given how Brian reacted around her. He basically lied saying Gina wasn’t his girlfriend and they even kissed at one point (and more, ugh). He didn’t even know if Gina was alive or dead (again). Way to make Brian a jerk, devs. The bad guys in this game are none other than the military, led by one-eyed, cigar-smoking, Vietnam-loving Colonel Kordsmeier. A typical solider who yearns for war, he considers himself a man’s man and doesn’t tolerate any weakness from men. He’s harsh on his own son, Leslie, whom he calls Flowerpot and won’t acknowledge him in public as being related. Another villain is a woman called Tarantula, a deadly mercenary with her own small army. She has a few pet tarantulas that she only feeds decomposed flesh, usually from humans. Both she and the Colonel are people you definitely don’t want to run into. They’re following the classic ‘military trying to use alien technology for bad things’ trope because, apparently, Joshua was right. Trantor and the Trantorians exist (and they really have a thing for onion soup). Apparently, they’re a peaceful species whose technology ended up in the wrong hands due to a traitor in their ranks. Speaking of Joshua, he’s back and he’s still a racist Japanese caricature. The developers didn’t even try to make him less offensive. And that’s not all. The word m/idget was used, along with the word ****, which are both derogatory in their own right. A big insult was the use of blatant blackface on Brian. I don’t care if it was stage makeup, a white guy pretended to be a black guy for a significant part of the game. It was massively uncomfortable to watch. Besides the offensive stuff, the game itself lasted a lot longer than it should have. There are several cutscenes that could’ve been left on the cutting room floor, plus a few gameplay sections. And to top it all off, the game ends on the worst kind of cliffhanger. Brian and co. are prepared to take on the bad guys and save Gina, and then the game ends. All that work with no payoff. Who decided that was a good idea? No wonder Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle is considered the worst of the trilogy.