Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

"Not your average vacation"

Introduction

Ah war has never been so much fun. In the good old days you used to rely on a blacksmith to create a sword that would see you through thousands of battles. That very sword would be your only friend on the battlefield, it would save you from murderous warlords, threatening men with hooks in place of their hands and so on. Naturally practically everyone thought that this game titled ''Broken Sword'' would put you in the place of a knight who thumped his enemy so hard his sword simply shattered to pieces and you as our wonderful player would be the one to lead him across the world looking for a famous and probably already dead blacksmith to hammer the sword back into a weapon worthy of the hands of a Knight.
This is, if anything, far from the truth. While the title on first sight can be somewhat misleading, Broken Sword is a game that plunges you into the American shoes of a Californian guy on what typical everyday Americans come to know as a ''vacation''. A vacation that would change his life forever, and by that I don't mean he'll find religious sanctity in the churches of Paris!

Story

So if this game isn't about a Knight trying to repair his broken sword what is it about? Broken Sword puts you in the role of the conscious of Californian George Stobbart an American who has decided to take a vacation and view the wonderful city of Paris, France. While there he stops at a café for a cup of coffee, when a man with a briefcase happens to bump into him and stare (or admire depending on your tastes) the waitress. Disgruntled George continues his coffee sitting in the wonderful weather when nothing more than a Clown has to pop round for a mid-afternoon chat. Of course this isn't your average every day clown that attempts to cheer people up as you'll obviously realise when you see him running out of the café and into the alleyways. A few minutes later and your suspicions that this isn't an everyday clown will be confirmed when the café suddenly explodes sending George sprawling to the floor only surviving thanks to a strategically placed umbrella that hovered above the table.
From here the adventure starts. George being the stubborn guy he is goes on a detective spree in attempt to unravel who the guy is. When asked why he is attempting to find the guy who blew the café up a few minutes into the game he replied with an obvious ''Because he tried to kill me!''
I might be a little sceptic but when someone tried killing you, the last thing you tried to do was hunt him down! After helping the other survivor of the blast, the waitress and attempting to find out where the clown went Broken Sword throws the second of in the future, many, life threatening situations. Luckily for you the trigger happy police officer is ordered to stand down and after a few questions have been asked the hunt resumes.

While searching for this very clown you and George will fly from one end of Europe to the other, meeting a huge cast of villains and friends in the attempt to hunt down the murderer. As it is because you and George head from country to country the average player who has a lack of knowledge on certain countries will feel slightly left out of the loop. For example Broken Sword doesn't mind breaking that boundary of stereotyping if it'll get a few laughs, as you will see in when George heads to Ireland. For example the old saying in England goes that ''Irish men are thick (i.e. Stupid)'' and this is put into effect in the game. When you head to Ireland you'll meet an Irish man who fits that stereotypical view when claiming that someone was ''run over by a car'' the Irishman will exclaim. ''What? The stupid man ran so fast he ran under the car?''
Such an example doesn't mean that Broken Sword refuses to take itself seriously. Broken Sword in fact can be very serious right when it needs to be creating an interesting flow between the serious situations and the merely comedic situations. The humorous situations of course will only be funny if you take the game's carefree nature.

Progressing on, with the death toll rising and the romance slowly but surely budding Broken Sword leads you on a wonderful adventure. You'll be shaking your head whispering a curse under your breath when the ''bad guy'' suddenly vanishes when you think you've found him. You'll be dropping your jaw with ''ahhhs'' as the hero falls almost painfully into love, raising your eyebrows in surprise at every twist the dark and deep plot throws at you, yet you'll chuckle at the jokes and slapstick humour that accompanies George everywhere he goes. And last but not least you'll be scratching your head wondering how George sticks a 6-foot long pole down the pocket of his jacket a la Mary Poppins!
It's a story that entices you, frustrates you and pleases you deeply when you get through it. One that will beckon you to laugh yet think deeply about the situation. Very few people will be able to get hold of it's strange carefree nature but once you start playing and once you get into the mood of it's comedic and yet serious story it will be a game you will continue to play not only for it's great story but for it's unique nature that is rare to find in modern gaming days.

Gameplay

Broken Sword is a point and click adventure game and as such is generally easier to play on the PC rather than the Playstation. Buying a mouse for the Playstation will possibly make the game easier to play, however I played Broken Sword on the Playstation using the standard controller and once you get used to the controls it is easy to get to grips with.
With the Playstation controller you have a simple layout. The square and O buttons will be the left and right mouse buttons, while the D-Pad will move the cursor. This in my opinion is a very simple layout of the controls and it worked wonders for me personally.
One of the major flaws with the game controls when using the controller as opposed to the mouse is sometimes the cursor will flicker back to the original spot or simply freeze when a scene takes place. This hampers the game because in certain situations, especially the life and death situations you require quick movements of the cursor to progress the game. However the game productors Revolution obviously realised this and were kind enough to include controls for the X and Triangle buttons. The X button would send the cursor immediately to the bottom of the screen, while the Triangle button would send the button straight to the top of the screen (where your inventory will be displayed). This is handy because usually in most situations where you need to be quick you have to choose something from your inventory (tap T button and et-viola) or answer a question THEN choose something from your inventory (tap X answer than T and et viola). On occasion when you don't require the T and X buttons yet still need to be quick with the cursor this is often a frustrating part of the game but usually you can get through it easily without too many problems. On occasion though you may get caught out and this is the only time when the actual problem gets annoying.
Loading times is the biggest problem of Broken Sword. Moving from one screen to another you'll be taken to a black screen where a wax seal will rotate until the new area loads up. It's ugly it's annoying and it's agonisingly slow at points. Luckily moving from one area to another that happens to be on the same screen doesn't have this loading scene pop up. In general the loading scene opens up when you move in or out of a building, from one street to an alleyway and such, yet doesn't open when you move from one area of the screen to the other (which is a lifesaver for me). Provided you aren't impatient then you can easily put up with the loading times. If however like me you're somewhat impatient then this can be agonising at time especially if you want to see what happens next in a certain situation.
The difficulty of the game depends generally on how smart or stupid you are to be contradicting. Who in their right minds for example would stick a bit of paperclips into a plug in order to get the dishwasher working again? Probably no one yet this is one of the puzzles in Broken Sword, as typically George has to ''pretend'' to be a Detective or an Electrician and such! As he isn't a qualified electrician you have to do the stupid and possibly life-threatening thing of sticking paperclips into a plug just to advance into the next scene. Those of you who boast of having huge amounts of IQ and logic will find yourself stumped in some of this games puzzles that force you to do the illogical thing.
As you can see Broken Sword while being serious yet comedic in it's story, the game isn't afraid to be logical and smart yet illogical and downright stupid when it comes to its puzzles. This isn't a bad thing mainly because it forces the player to do the unexpected rather than stick to the tried and tested ''find item, move item, attach item and do it logically.'' Referring back to the paperclip and plug example, who would have thought about looking for a paperclip to shove into the plug in the first place? All in all very few people would have done so. But this is the nature of the game, and for Broken Sword this is just another way of forcing you to get that brain moving in different ways.
Of course this rather makes the game frustratingly hard at points but it shouldn't hamper your enjoyment after all, as it states in the manual ''Explore all avenues'' because sometimes the most innocent of objects could be the key to success.

The difficult puzzles plus the length of the story and perhaps the loading times (*wink*) will keep you occupied for hours upon hours of playtime. The puzzles and the story go hand in hand and personally despite the few moments of frustration from the puzzles I found the game to be enjoyable for the long amount of time to play the game. I couldn't realistically give you an estimate of how long the average player will take to complete the game because this is a game that isn't made for the ''average'' player as you probably realised! That's not to say the average player would be put off by such a game, it's enjoyable for everyone as long as you take the time to settle into the mood of the game, and the replay value is there for another go through just so you can look back and say… ''Why didn't I figure that out the first time I played''. The second time you play the game you'll almost certainly pick up some of the little titbits from the beginning of the game that you didn't realise had any link or connection to the end of the game and such.

Graphics

Broken Sword on the Playstation doesn't boast to have the best graphics for its time. Sure enough the graphics of the game aren't brilliant but they get the job done. You'll see the characters and you'll be able to make out when they blink and move their mouths, if they have a moustache and such but not easily of course. Close up scenes such as telephone conversations generally allow you the best face up detail of the characters but only so few of the game's major characters will ever be allowed to use the phone.
However provided like me you don't care if you can see the white's of a characters eyes in the actual meat of the game then it shouldn't matter too much. The body language is easy to pick up and luckily the game focussed more on the actual character's body language rather than facial expressions, which is a godsend since you'll rarely ever make out their facial expressions unless they are close up.
Attention to detail however was spent heavily on the background scenery. The sewers of Paris for example is dark and murky yet stunningly detailed. The stained glass windows of a church will instantly grab your eyes and the ruins of a castle in Ireland are wonderful to look at. There is a reason the game features so heavily on the backgrounds rather than the faces of the characters and this is because as typical of point and clicks you'll need to get items, clues and of course you'll need to see the exits and such.
Overall the graphics are good for the game. They aren't cutting edge such as Final Fantasy but even so they serve the game fine.

Sounds and Music

Broken Sword features voice acting, and is one of the few games on the Playstation to feature voice acting WITH subtitles. This is great since I know many people who are hard of hearing and even deaf who just give up on a game because they can't understand what's being said.
People with perfect hearing may well need the subtitle option anyway! There are a variety of accents, the American accent of George the hero! The French accent of Nicole the reporter! And a somewhat grunting sort of accent from a French man who digs up roads… Anyway, there are plenty of accents varying from British, French, American and even Syrian and Eastern accents so the subtitles will help if you actually don't understand what they are saying because of the sounds of these accents. Of course, the bigger reason happens to be the music, but I'll explain later.

The voice acting in Broken Sword could be classed as brilliant in some areas yet let down in others. Some people seem rather bland when it comes to saying something that should be filled with emotion. However this isn't too much of a problem for most of the part of the game has some great voice acting. I never tire from George's typical line to a costume seller: ''I hate CLOWNS!'' he says it as if he has reason to hate them, which he does, of course the costume seller is consumed by confusion of why anyone can hate a clown! Yet there is some brilliant voice acting that just makes you cringe. For example a very snobbish hotel receptionist had the tendency to make you wish to hit him just for the way he spoke to you. It's this capturing of voice acting that shines. The bad parts of voice acting? You'll find a few patches of those especially at the start of the game when a police officer blandly goes on about the supernatural yet sounds as if he has no idea what he's talking about.

Music… As I said earlier you may need the subtitle option to see what is being said during conversations mainly because of the music. The music follows the mood perfectly, in a threatening conversation the music will get tense and dark sometimes a tad too loud often drowning out the conversation in the process. As usual whenever you get into a threatening conversation the villain often lowers his voice to the merest whisper as he ends his line and the music does the rest. You may need to fiddle with the music/Voice bars in the options section of the game in order to hear everything that's being said yet still be able to listen to the music.
The music helps to set the mood of the game and as such there are not many tunes you will be searching for to listen to on the bus the school. Although mostly threatening or tense or even surprising music the introduction and ending themes of the game are generally the more interesting themes. As such Broken Sword only uses the music for the mood and with all the conversations going on you can often find yourself in quiet spots. Only when events occur and scenes progress do you really find the music at it's best. For example when you open a dustbin to look for clues and a cat jumps out the music suddenly breaks out of nowhere as if deliberately setting you up for heart attack, otherwise the music only serves its purposes for incidents like these.

Sound effects in Broken Sword are one of the better points of the game. While the music sets the mood to introduce you into the scene and when events occur, the sound sets the actual scene. Dripping water gushes of wind and so on. When you traverse the sewers of France for example you can hear the plopping of water or some other unmentionable bodily substance falling into the sewer waters. It's the sound effects you'll most likely be listening out for, the click of a phone, the opening of a door and so on. Clattering sounds, footsteps, windows creaking, phones dialling it's all there and they greatly help give the game a realistic feel.

Conclusion

Broken Sword, certainly isn't your typical adventure. A great story clouded with mystery, murders, romance and humour serve to keep you interested in the game. It's different to other games via it's serious yet humorous outlook, it's encouragement to do things you wouldn't normally do in real life to get out of sticky spots. You could say it's a mixed bag of fun that requires you to be open minded or even laid back to enjoy. If you're the most serious person in the world this wouldn't be the best game for you and likewise if you were a guy or girl who only laughed at the funniest jokes.
It's a game with it's own carefree mood, its own carefree views and as long as you hold on tight and just enjoy the ride it'll give you hours of fun and enjoyment both through it's story and it's comedic nature. If you hate villains that dress up like clowns however you'd do well to avoid the game.

Overall give it a try, it's a fun game. There'll be laughs; there'll be serious moments and romantic moments. It's a cracking game to play, extremely enjoyable. If you aren't sure about the nature of the game loan it off a friend. But if you want a game that promises to be fun and serious at the same time this is worth searching for. One of the best point and click adventures on the Playstation, it got that award in the UK and it gets that award from me.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/27/03, Updated 01/28/03