Having liked Runaway: A Road Adventure (despite some really annoying pixel-hunting!) and, although not liking Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle quite as much, being really intrigued as to how the story would finish, I was eager to play Runaway: A Twist of Fate. In this final part of the trilogy our heroic couple Brian Basco and Gina Timmins, thrown together by coincidence but staying together through choice, have to unravel a complex web of intrigue and conspiracy to get to the truth.
This isn't always easy though, since at the end of Dream of the Turtle Gina was close to death, and at the beginning of A Twist of Fate, it appears that Brian actually is dead! It takes quite a while to piece everything together and see how things fit in with events from the previous games, since initially there's apparently no connection - when things do fall into place it's actually done very cleverly, albeit I did feel that there were a lot of unanswered questions left hanging in the air. The game starts with Gina attending Brian's funeral - it turns out that he's been in an institution for mentally challenged individuals for some time, blabbering on about aliens and conspiracies - of course no-one believes him for a minute. Gina also has no memory of all this, but she does want to help Brian. The first of many plot twists is when she receives a text message from Brian's phone - after he's been buried.
The graphics for all three games are good, but A Twist of Fate seems to take them to a new level. It's hard to describe the visuals as they are heavily stylised and quite unlike any other game's graphics (at least, any that I can think of) - something along the lines of a very detailed cartoon, 2D yet with a real feeling of depth, and almost anime-esque but at the same time something quite different from anime. The locations are varied and interesting, as well as being nice to look at, and often you get visual clues to puzzle solutions. The voice acting is mostly very good too, and while the music ranges from the bizarre to the sublime; occasionally it felt a little out of place, but for the most part it added to the game's atmosphere nicely.
The interface is excellent - well, unless you're using purely the mouse, in which case getting in and out of inventory management is a real pain. Using tab to bring up the inventory, space bar to highlight all hotspots on the screen and function keys for other options, along with the mouse for everything else, works very nicely. The ability to view all hotspots is a very welcome addition, since my biggest gripe with the first game was the pixel hunting. The only slight problem with this function is that although it also highlights exits, on a couple of screens where it isn't apparent that there's more of the room than what you can see on screen at the time, this isn't shown; however this is a small and largely unimportant problem as trial and error will normally result in you stumbling on the unseen area sooner or later anyway. One excellent idea this game uses is that when Brian has a plan made up of several different elements, the plan itself shows up as an inventory item, and your progress is automatically updated each time you look at it - so you never lose track of your objectives.
The help feature is very cool, featuring Joshua (you know, the crazy guy who was trying to communicate with aliens from the earlier games) manning the Pendulo Studios office and offering you hints. The hints are nicely phrased - cryptic enough to not make things too obvious, but helpful enough to get you through the awkward bits. You often have a choice of what to receive a hint about. This is a far more satisfying way of implementing a hint feature than I've seen in most adventure games that do offer in-game hints.
The puzzles themselves are not usually particularly difficult, although there are certainly a few that will take you a while to figure out. There's a nice variety to the type of puzzle, and the logic holds together much better than in the second Runaway game. There is an amazing set of weird and wonderful characters, and though the writing sometimes suffers from poor translation (at least, that's what I think it is), the whole thing is wonderfully surreal yet somehow plausible. The best example of this is the section that you play as Brian (come on, I know you didn't think he was really dead) in the asylum - it's very bizarre, completely surreal and yet somehow, on a weird level of sanity, it all makes sense. This section was one of the most unique and enjoyable of any adventure game I've ever played. Not all of the game matches its quality, but it's worth playing the game for that one chapter alone. One character (who you never actually see) exists entirely to rant about things - you start him off on a topic and he'll rant away about it for a time (this is used in one puzzle solution too, but mainly it's just for fun). This character then rants about the game itself when you've completed it. There are quite a large number of "just for fun" elements in the game, and Pendulo Studios reference pop culture, other adventure games including the previous Runaway games, and even themselves to bring more humour into the game.
All in all, Runaway 3: A Twist of Fate is an excellent adventure game, surpassing both its prequels in terms of style and execution, and getting rid of the more irritating elements of both games. However it falls short of 5-star status because, at 10 hours, it really is rather short. When you're enjoying a game so much that you don't want it to end that is of course a good sign, but I really felt the game being short, coupled with an ending that didn't leave me feeling particularly satisfied with the outcome, knocked a star off its final rating.
You don't really need to have played the first two Runaway games to enjoy this one; however you will understand more of the in-jokes and the characters if you have (and also appreciate the enhanced interface more!). If you have played Runaway 1 and 2, it's likely you'll spend the first couple of chapters of Runaway 3 wondering what on earth is going on and how it all fits to the events of the first two games, but don't let that worry you. If you've never played them, the main events are played out within scenes of the game; in flashbacks during a psychological assessment and writing a movie script that's actually based on the earlier games. If you play this first, I think the pixel-hunting in the earlier games may test your patience a bit.
System Specs (Minimum):
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
CPU: P4 1.7GHz
GPU: 128Mb supporting 1024/768 at 16 / 24-bit colour
RAM: 1Gb
HDD Space: 8Gb
Tested on: Packard Bell iPower X9810
See all 39 screenshots from Runaway: A Twist of Fate:
This isn't always easy though, since at the end of Dream of the Turtle Gina was close to death, and at the beginning of A Twist of Fate, it appears that Brian actually is dead! It takes quite a while to piece everything together and see how things fit in with events from the previous games, since initially there's apparently no connection - when things do fall into place it's actually done very cleverly, albeit I did feel that there were a lot of unanswered questions left hanging in the air. The game starts with Gina attending Brian's funeral - it turns out that he's been in an institution for mentally challenged individuals for some time, blabbering on about aliens and conspiracies - of course no-one believes him for a minute. Gina also has no memory of all this, but she does want to help Brian. The first of many plot twists is when she receives a text message from Brian's phone - after he's been buried.
The graphics for all three games are good, but A Twist of Fate seems to take them to a new level. It's hard to describe the visuals as they are heavily stylised and quite unlike any other game's graphics (at least, any that I can think of) - something along the lines of a very detailed cartoon, 2D yet with a real feeling of depth, and almost anime-esque but at the same time something quite different from anime. The locations are varied and interesting, as well as being nice to look at, and often you get visual clues to puzzle solutions. The voice acting is mostly very good too, and while the music ranges from the bizarre to the sublime; occasionally it felt a little out of place, but for the most part it added to the game's atmosphere nicely.
The interface is excellent - well, unless you're using purely the mouse, in which case getting in and out of inventory management is a real pain. Using tab to bring up the inventory, space bar to highlight all hotspots on the screen and function keys for other options, along with the mouse for everything else, works very nicely. The ability to view all hotspots is a very welcome addition, since my biggest gripe with the first game was the pixel hunting. The only slight problem with this function is that although it also highlights exits, on a couple of screens where it isn't apparent that there's more of the room than what you can see on screen at the time, this isn't shown; however this is a small and largely unimportant problem as trial and error will normally result in you stumbling on the unseen area sooner or later anyway. One excellent idea this game uses is that when Brian has a plan made up of several different elements, the plan itself shows up as an inventory item, and your progress is automatically updated each time you look at it - so you never lose track of your objectives.
The help feature is very cool, featuring Joshua (you know, the crazy guy who was trying to communicate with aliens from the earlier games) manning the Pendulo Studios office and offering you hints. The hints are nicely phrased - cryptic enough to not make things too obvious, but helpful enough to get you through the awkward bits. You often have a choice of what to receive a hint about. This is a far more satisfying way of implementing a hint feature than I've seen in most adventure games that do offer in-game hints.The puzzles themselves are not usually particularly difficult, although there are certainly a few that will take you a while to figure out. There's a nice variety to the type of puzzle, and the logic holds together much better than in the second Runaway game. There is an amazing set of weird and wonderful characters, and though the writing sometimes suffers from poor translation (at least, that's what I think it is), the whole thing is wonderfully surreal yet somehow plausible. The best example of this is the section that you play as Brian (come on, I know you didn't think he was really dead) in the asylum - it's very bizarre, completely surreal and yet somehow, on a weird level of sanity, it all makes sense. This section was one of the most unique and enjoyable of any adventure game I've ever played. Not all of the game matches its quality, but it's worth playing the game for that one chapter alone. One character (who you never actually see) exists entirely to rant about things - you start him off on a topic and he'll rant away about it for a time (this is used in one puzzle solution too, but mainly it's just for fun). This character then rants about the game itself when you've completed it. There are quite a large number of "just for fun" elements in the game, and Pendulo Studios reference pop culture, other adventure games including the previous Runaway games, and even themselves to bring more humour into the game.
You don't really need to have played the first two Runaway games to enjoy this one; however you will understand more of the in-jokes and the characters if you have (and also appreciate the enhanced interface more!). If you have played Runaway 1 and 2, it's likely you'll spend the first couple of chapters of Runaway 3 wondering what on earth is going on and how it all fits to the events of the first two games, but don't let that worry you. If you've never played them, the main events are played out within scenes of the game; in flashbacks during a psychological assessment and writing a movie script that's actually based on the earlier games. If you play this first, I think the pixel-hunting in the earlier games may test your patience a bit.
System Specs (Minimum):
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
CPU: P4 1.7GHz
GPU: 128Mb supporting 1024/768 at 16 / 24-bit colour
RAM: 1Gb
HDD Space: 8Gb
Tested on: Packard Bell iPower X9810
See all 39 screenshots from Runaway: A Twist of Fate:
- Runaway: A Twist of Fate screenshots - 8
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