Runaway: Dream of the Turtle is the sequel to one of my more favorite recent adventure titles, Runaway: A Road Adventure. This continuation of the previous title's story brings the two main characters back into focus as well as a whole slew of new and old side characters.

Pendulo Studios continues the visual style laid out in the first game and once again, it is an impressive feel. The characters themselves are cel-shaded models that are free to roam around on the screen, while the backdrop and other obstacles are static images that blend almost perfectly with the characters. Though other games have done this, it never seems to come off quite as cleanly as the Runaway games have managed to make them.

Dream of the Turtle's musical score pretty solid. I found that the different styles of background music (hip-hop, hawaiian and R&B) never really felt out of place when you considered the location, and the sound quality was also top notch.

Also of note is the mostly fluid dialogue that is present in this game. Like most adventure titles, Runaway has a lot of voicework in it. Thankfully, I didn't find the sound clips used in the hundreds of conversations I had to go through to be choppy or badly done. Instead, conversations seemed to flow fairly well from one topic to another (thank you script-writer).

Runaway: Dream of the Turtle takes place just after the first game. A Road Adventure was told in flashback format by our main character, Brian Basco. His first adventure starts off with him traveling across country after getting his Physics degree. All is well and good until he hits a dancer named Gina Timmins and the two are forced to dodge the mafia, uncover ancient Hopi secrets and, of course, fall in love. That's really all you need to know about the previous game's plot in order to play Dream of the Turtle, but I would definitely recommend picking up and playing through that game before starting on this second adventure.

In the span between the games, it seems like Brian's demeanor has changed quite a bit. He is no longer the prim-and-proper academic. Instead, he has come out of his shell a bit and is exploring his inner surfer-dude. While I can't say I completely like the change in style, I can only assume it has more to do with the Hawaii-based locale of the game than an actual change in Brian's character since he is still smart. He is just a bit more outgoing than before.

So, Brian and Gina are having some fun in the sun in Hawaii, when the two characters find themselves in a free-falling plane. Brian forces the only parachute on Gina and shoves her out the door while he holds on tight for the impending crash. And that's just the opening sequence.

Stranded in the middle of a lush jungle, Brian must find Gina and get them back to safety. But on the way, the duo will find themselves in The Temple of Tiki, communicating to aliens, and even doing some minor globe-hopping.

Some of the better parts of this game are when side characters from the previous title make guest appearances. It is always fun to see how the game carries over aspects of its prequels, but still doesn't rely wholly on the player's knowledge of who that character is or was. This makes Dream of the Turtle accessible for players who have been through the original story and those who haven't. On a side note, Runaway comes with a short video to quickly recap the people and events of the first game, but you don't get nearly the impact and feeling of who those characters are unless you play through A Road Adventure.

As far as the average adventure game goes these days, Runaway: Dream of the Turtle is definitely on the tougher side. Though the puzzles present rarely, if ever, deal with manipulating objects and equipment that isn't in the inventory, I still found the game to be quite a challenge and it required many hours to play through it all. But on the flip side, I found that I couldn't really put the game down and I think there were only a few occasions where I just had to put the game away because a problem seemed insurmountable.

I do have to give this one hint though - if you find yourself completely lost or unable to figure out what you need to do in order to get past a problem, I recommend talking to everyone again. There seemed to be a few times when new dialogue options would appear after going through all of the conversation trees. This is normal for most games of this style, but instead of the new options appearing at the root of the conversation, they sometimes required that I go through particular paths before I found the new option. This was pretty annoying when it happened and I'm pretty sure each of the times I had to walk away from the game involved one of these instances.

It seems like Runaway: Dream of the Turtle has gotten rid of most of the pixel-hunting that was fairly prevalent in the first game. In Dream of the Turtle, the hot-spots and the objects they represent tend to be a little bigger and more pronounced, and they still fit nicely with the surroundings (as opposed to those games that make the hot-spots shine or look different so that the player knows he/she can click on it). I didn't really notice that this issue was resolved until I took a few hours to play through the original game again.

Any fan of the first game should definitely pick up this title to see how Brian and Gina's interesting story continues. If you are thinking about picking up this game, but you haven't played the first one yet, then I would definitely recommend finding a copy of A Road Adventure first. Because, even though Dream of the Turtle is a stand-alone adventure that has a brief movie to get your caught up and/or refresh your memory, you won't have the full grasp of your main characters without the crazy adventure that preceded this one.