Interpreting dreams can be quite a simple matter. If you dream about getting on the wrong bus or train, for example, that's probably your subconscious indicating that you've lost your way in life. If you dream of being in prison with your partner as a cell-mate, it could mean you feel trapped in your current relationship. If you dream about turtles, however, you're probably just really, really weird.

Just like the developers of this third-person point and click adventure. In terms of strangeness, the plot goes well beyond the twilight zone and ends up around midnight somewhere, as a basic "crash-landed on a tropical island" scenario soon spirals off into tangents involving military projects and other-worldly forces.

Runaway 2 certainly has a distinct character. Aside from the off-the-wall storyline, it has a lively sense of humour. Sure, it's hit and miss, with some real groaners, but there are some genuinely funny lines here and the game doesn't take itself too seriously (upon examining some planks piled up against the wall in a basement, you're told that they're just there for decoration; stacks of wood are a compulsory fixture in cellars, apparently).

All this fits well with the cartoon-style visuals, which are vibrant and crisp. It's a shame the sonic side of the package doesn't back this quality up, though: the voice acting is hammy and sounds like it's being read from a script rather than actually spoken. Also, much of the dialogue and characters play on tired stereotypes. This may be an attempt at irony in some measure, but it wears thin nonetheless.

The most important consideration, however, is obviously the quality of the adventure itself. There's both good and bad news when it comes to the composition of the puzzles. Many are quite logical and the game performs an admirable job of providing you with hints when you're on the right path with an idea, but haven't quite got all the elements correct.

Obsolete items are removed from your inventory when you move from one chapter to the next, so you're never stuck with a huge and baffling array of objects. Incidentally, in a novel installation option, Runaway 2 actually lets you install one chapter at a time as you progress through the adventure (and it uninstalls the previous chapter) so those with limited hard drive space don't have to perform the full 7GB install.

The bad news is that there are certainly some obscure solutions which will have you scratching your head for a while and then uttering some choice words when you discover what you hadn't thought of. Skip over the next paragraph if you don't want to read a spoiler of an example.

Spoiler: early in the game you have to fix a key that's been snapped in two. The solution? Take a magnifying glass, attach it to a rod and put it under a ray of sunlight in order to melt and weld the key pieces together. As Jeremy Paxman might say, "Yessssssss..."

But despite some hitches on the puzzle front, the poor voice acting and wooden characterisation, Runaway 2 is a solid and enjoyable adventure which provides some good laughs along the way, and that never hurts.

This is a point and click adventure with a sense of humour and some generally well balanced puzzles (although they slip into absurdity at times). It's well worth a punt if you can tolerate the cheesier elements such as the stereotyped characters.