Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle

Brian Basco And his beau, Gina (let's face it - not two of the most recognisable game characters ever) first appeared in 2OO3's Runaway, a half-decent adventure that revelled in its love of LucasArts point-and-click classics. Not content with one disappearing act, the couple are off again, this time a Hawaiian holiday prompting a global puzzle hunt.

With a crisp, clean and colourful art style, Runaway is a pretty game - which isn't a bad thing for a point-and-click adventure given the ungodly amount of time you'll spend staring at the screen and scratching your head over some logic-defying problem or other.

Actually, Runaway errs on the side of caution when it comes to mind-bending puzzles. Brian does a good job of helping out providing decent prompts in the right places and taking short-cuts for items so you don't have to find every last nut bolt or porcupine quill. But for every helpful hint there's always a hidden hotspot that just doesn't want to be found, or a collection of items that defy any sort of logic. This means you get stuck, and in a game that's supposed to be funny, being stuck is a bit of a problem.

Pissed-Up Pooch

As an example, at the start you need to distract a particularly aggressive monkey. Assuming you can find the robot dog with the leg-cocking function, you fill it full of whisky, put it where the monkey can see it let the dog urinate and watch monkey lick it up. Monkey gets drunk, Brian strolls past.

Solve that puzzle quickly and it's funny. Kind of. But take more than ten minutes and any humour quickly flatlines - especially when the game compounds your frustrations by often making you do the same sequence twice. If only Pendulo Studios had taken inspiration from Telltale's games featuring a dog detective and hyperkinetic rabbity-thing.

Runaway undoubtedly has some decent moments and a pleasing graphic style, but a bit more attention to the puzzles, the pace and the script, and this old-school adventure might have been more of a turtle's dream than a turtle's head.