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Review

Out of puff

by Craig Grannell (October 6th, 2010 at 12:00 pm)

Game: Mr.Runner. Publisher: GameVision. Price: too much (free). Don’t download this game.

Ever wondered what a game would look like if the Ponos guys (creators of the wonderful Mr.AahH!! and the slightly-less-wonderful-but-still-very-good Mr.Space!!) had a lobotomy, specifically one that removed every bit of game-creation skill from their brains and replaced it with a dead bee inside a crisp packet? Then you’re in luck! Enter, stage right: Mr.Runner.

I think the word you're looking for is, in fact, garbage.

Everybody loves Mr.AahH!!, that strange little stick-guy, swinging from platform to platform, without a care in the world (apart from the certain death that comes from falling to your doom). And everyone loves Mr.Space!! (although not as much as Mr.AahH!!), that strange little stick-guy, leaping from spot to spot, without a care in the world (apart from the certain death that comes from being crushed by a wall).

Clearly, GameVision love Mr.AahH!! and Mr.Space!! an awful lot, because they’ve created Mr.Runner, which on the face of it looks an awful lot like the Ponos Mr. games. That is until you start playing, at which point you discover Mr.Runner is simply awful.

As you might have guessed from the title, the Mr. in this game is running. He runs up stairs, he run down slopes. At regular intervals, the walls crunch down in a manner NOT AT ALL like Mr.Space!!. Every now and again, Mr.Runner reaches a badly-drawn famous landmark, at which point he pauses and poses, and a badly drawn firework goes off.

And that’s it.

There’s no score system and zero innovation, and the two modes are either ‘run out of time’ or ‘run out of lives’. Both of them, however, provide a clear ‘run out of reasons to not delete Mr.Runner’. Avoid.

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