The Run is a new FMV videogame – something we’ve not seen for a while – which feels a bit like the recent Strangers trilogy, here centred around influencer Zanna Hendricks (the stunning Roxanne McKee), as she takes a trip to Italy, has a daliance with local chap Matteo (George Blagden– Black Mirror: Hang The DJ), but then heads out for a run and soon chances upon four masked baddies with evil intent, each named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
As you ‘run’ through the game, you’ll be offered choices which will determine the outcome, starting off with a couple that don’t really affect anything such as whether to be nice to Matteo as you send him out the door, but that’s to get your grey cells going.
Later on, as you come up against War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, one such option is to tackle one of them with a rifle… or should you have chosen the knife? Choose the wrong weapon, and you’ll soon end up brown bread, but thankfully, I didn’t have to restart from scratch. The game just counts up the number of deaths, but that didn’t appear to punish me adversely.
I went up the North Trail, and while Ms McKee is hotter than the sun, The Run does have some some cheesy acting and dialogue along the way, BUT, while I knew beforehand that horror maestro Dario Argento (Tenebrae) pops up as a priest, I was more bowled over that Franco Nero also pops up, listed here as a Hunter. Some will know him as Django. To me, he’ll forever be General Esperanza from Die Hard 2.
Personally, I got the Damnation ending, and might possibly try the South path for a second walkthrough, but it’s not something I’m drawn to 100% by playing every last path and exploring all 5 outcomes – unless I can do so without starting from scratch. It would be nice to just ‘rewind’ a bit, which I think should be an option once you’ve gone through it a first time.
And for podcast host Chase Peters, has the voice, David Keith, ever met Keith David?
Thanks to our friends at PRM Games for the review code for this game.
Overall: 6/10
The Run is out now on PC/Steam for just a tenner, although there’s a 10% discount at the time of posting, so it’s worth a punt.
Director: Paul Raschid
Producers: Sara Sometti Michaels, Seth Michaels
Writer: Paul Raschid
Story: Jonnie Hurn
Music: Glen Gabriel
Cast:
Zanna Hendricks: Roxanne McKee
Matteo: George Blagden
Priest: Dario Argento
Hunter: Franco Nero
Oil Miller: Fabio Testi
Cliff: Jamie Ward
Jocelyn: Jemma Donovan
Brian: Seth Michaels
Death: Tristan McConnell
Famine: Lauriane Rouault
War: Ivan Iliev
Pestilence: Lee Huang
Chase Peters: David Keith
Teen Zanna: Vittoriana Papi
Important info:
- Developer: PRM Games
- Publisher: PRM Games
- Players: Single-player
PC specs:
- CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
- Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
- RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
- Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
- 1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
- 2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.