Brain racking puzzles and a cacophony of accents in Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle

The Dream of the Turtle is the second installment of the Runaway adventure game series. Like the first game, this game follows the adventures of Brian Brasco and his lady friend Gina. This time Brian and Gina are on a romantic trip to the islands of Hawaii. By a strange turn of events, what would have been a routine scenic plane ride turns into a life-threatening situation when the plane’s pilot decides to kick the can. Of course, there’s only one parachute. Brian, being a chivalrous young man, makes Gina take the parachute and pushes her out of the quickly descending plane before trying to steer the plane into a safe landing. That’s where our adventure starts.

If it weren’t for the almost-nude-scene in the beginning of the game, the surprisingly hard puzzles, and the presence of alcohol in the game, I would have pegged Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle as My First Adventure Game.The music for this game sounds like it came straight out of the latest teen movie.I had to double-check to make sure I hadn’t accidentally left my N*Sync CD in my computer when I started the game.If you’re into candy pop boy bands, you are going to love the music in Runaway.

While the choice of music isn’t going to win any awards, the graphics in Runaway are surprisingly good. The cel shading is crisp and detailed and movement is so fluid that watching some scenes makes me feel like I’m watching a Saturday morning cartoon. But with bad dubbing.Very very bad dubbing.I don’t remember the last time I heard such awful voice acting.One character’s accent was so bad, I couldn’t even figure out if he was Scottish, Hawaiian, or Chinese.It’s unfortunate that there’s no option to turn off voice acting altogether, since the game would be more enjoyable with just subtitles.Fortunately, the music isn’t something that would be missed, so one could just turn sound off altogether.

Another thing that Runaway: The Dream of the Turtles does right is handling load times. When an area is entered the first time, it takes a few seconds to load, but after that, going back and forth between that area and a previous one takes less than half a second. This makes revisiting areas when you forgot to pick something up more bearable. Believe me: there will be lots of times where you have to trudge back to a previous area to pick something up.

Point and click adventures are not the most complicated in the way controls, but I was pleased to see how easy it was to just pick up and play The Dream of the Turtle.I didn’t have to read any help files or go through any tutorials.Left click to examine something, right click to pick it up, scroll the mouse up to gain access to options and inventory, and most importantly, right click during dialog to skip the forward.One complaint I had about the inventory was that sometimes I would need to use one object with another, and instead of clicking one object and then the next, I have to click them in the appropriate order or else it’s wrong.I may be nit-picking there, but that seems like an unnecessary amount of detail to put into object interaction.

Puzzles in this game are in the higher difficulty level.Solutions do make sense once you find them, but getting to them is another story.Some of the puzzles are definitely in the realm of strange things you would never think to do first.The puzzles are satisfying to solve, but trying to solve it is an exercise in frustration so make sure you have plenty of patience handy.

Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle may not be the next Lucas Arts classic, but it’s still a decent point and click adventure game.Anyone who is a fan of the genre and doesn’t mind playing with the sound off should be pleased with this game.Besides, it’s not like there’s a plethora of games in this genre to play right now anyway.