Who says the adventure game genre is dead? It seems every time I turn around there is a new adventure game coming out. Sure, they may not have the polygon count or the latest graphical shaders, but when it comes to story telling, there is still no better genre for a good tale. Runaway: A Road Adventure came out a little while back now and with a sequel fast approaching, I figured why not dive into this tale and see how good of an adventure it really is.

The story, as you may expect, takes many twists and turns. However, at no point does the story get overly complicated and it flows quite nicely all the way through. You play Brian Basco, a student who is on his way from New York to California where he is going to be attending Berkeley. On his way out of the city, however, he hits a curvaceous young woman named Gina with his car and rushes her to the hospital. It turns out Gina was fleeing from some mob thugs after witnessing her father's murder! Her father gave her an ancient crucifix and told her it was what the mobsters were after. Brian feels compelled to help Gina (he's young and she's hot... and he hit her with his car, who wouldn't feel compelled!) to find out just what the mystery behind this crucifix is and why the mob is out to kill for it!

The game is a classic point-and-click adventure: you click your mouse around the screen to move your character and interact with objects and the environment. Most items of note are highlighted as you move your mouse over them, implying that they have some sort of relevance to your adventure. The backgrounds are all beautifully hand-drawn, giving the game a wonderful animated look and key items don't tend to scream out their obviousness. This is a bit of a catch-22, however: on one hand, the items blend in seamlessly to the game and feel like they belong, but on the other hand, you'll find you may have to do some pixel-hunting (moving your mouse slowly from side to side) to find certain items that blend in a little bit too much.

All the dialogue, and there is a lot of it, is spoken. The voice acting, while not the best you will find, does a good job of telling the tale and letting you get to know the characters. The background music, however, does a much better job and really helps to set the various moods and situations you will find yourself stuck in.

One large complaint that I have with the game is that you need to have a use for an item before acquiring it. For example, say there is a branch you'd like to pick up and it looks fairly obvious that you need to pick up. The game will not you do take it with you until you find the puzzle that you need to use the branch for. Now given a reason, you can go back and pick up the branch. I found this terribly frustrating as I would often not realize I had to go back to get an item as I was already told once that I didn't need it. Because of this, the puzzles tend to be harder then they need to be. In addition, there is very little in the way of clues for how to solve the puzzles and I found myself consulting message boards and hint sites a little too frequently.

The story helps to make up for the frustration and I found that I really wanted to find out just what the mystery with the crucifix was and why it was leading me to an ancient Hopi Native American village! By removing some of the requirements for acquiring key objects and perhaps including a few more hints on how to solve the various puzzles, this game could've been excellent, but as it is, it will probably just make you want to quit in frustration. Perhaps the sequel can improve on these issues - there's a great deal of potential here!