Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

"Nor is it a sword, nor is it broken!"

When I was younger my life was so wonderful. We had 2D Sonic games, no homework, good music and not much pocket money. Enough about the good old days, Well, a few years ago actually, I played Discworld and Monkey Island and wanted a brand new adventure, from the video movies, Broken Sword looked like an interctive cartoon, and for its time, it was the best game ever for me, until I was introduced in to Final Fantasy VII. Then I relised how poor this was.

I do not like France much, but after Broken Sword, it gave me another bad opinion on France, as well as Ireland, Arabia and Scotland, everything seems so potrayed. The france people sound like arrogant careless people in the game, The Irish accents are awful and have names which Irish people may not use, Some of the british are drawn to have tall top hats and umbrellas and the arabians are potrayed to sound like assasins. It is all scary stuff how Revolution potrayed so many countries, even the spanish are made to be very paranoid in the game.

You travel the world, as I stated above, starting your adventure in France and then Ireland, then other countries. You take the roll of George Stobbart, an american tourist who just happens to be the next Sherlock Holmes. He is havoing a quiet drink in a café, and all of a sudden a clown sets a bomb, blowing everything thing up, killing a man of importance and making a dash for the sewer (I always preferred get away cars and chases from The Italian Job). George has to trac down the clown and solve a crime which takes him to many European and Asian countries.

Goerge is one of the most boring characters in videogames to date. Whenever he visits someplace like a hospictal or street, he has a witty comment in a narrative tone, he even explains in a none emotional way how he survived the bomb, there is hardly any emotion in his voice at all. Nico, the female main character has a very annoying voice which is ahrd to understand, sounds like a fifty year old woman and vibrates whatever the television is on.

The game is set out like a point and click, in a form of Monkey Island, Discworld, Sam & Max and Maniac Mansion. Instead of selecting 'Talk, Push, Pull, Pick Up, Use and Look' icons, Whever the curser is above something, an icon will replace the mouse pointer, this could be a cog, magnifying glass or the talk icon, clever stuff.

Only bother to play this game if you enjoy cartoon graphics, a challenging puzzle point and click adventure game and listen to bad voice acting, other-wise, leave well alone!

Good

- Good graphics

Bad

- Horrible loading times
- The story does not exactly surround a sword which needs fixing I'm afraid...
- Potrays many places

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/02, Updated 09/15/02