Broken Sword: The Shadow Of The Templars

For any serious gamer, they look back and think of one game as the sole purpose for making them fall in love with that genre of games. That one game was the sole reason why they've played, and loved so many other games. For example, UFO:Enemy Unknown made me fall in love with the strategy genre, if it wasn't for that game, I wouldn't of played other great gems such as Command and Conquer and Dune. For adventure games, it was Broken Sword.

I'd played a good few adventure games before hand, and liked a good lot of them, but Broken Sword was different. From the moment the stunning first introduction movie played I was hooked. The graphics, even to this day, are stunning. All hand drawn, throughout the whole game, you never notice a single sprite used twice. I played through the game again recently to write the review, and I was still impressed. Having such a vibrant, colorful world makes such a difference compared to dark and dreary environments of modern games. Every character, and there's a lot of them, ooze's personality, some are stereotypes (you know who the goons are, the moment you spot them), but you'll certainly remember them. I can't really fault the graphics, they bring they world to life. The interface, menus, pointers etc are showing their age a bit now, but you can't really fault them for that.

The audio. The game is fully voiced, you're hear every word. From the waitress' first "I need a drink", to the irish pub where the regular's, well, need a drink. George, the main character, is superbly voiced, and the script is clever, witty, and hilarious. George is the type of guy where is sense of humor alone can and will get him out of many life threatening situations. Nico, the female interest, sounds very suited too, and you can literally hear the chemistry between the two voice actors as you'll see it throughout the game. A few of the other voice actors are weaker, but by nowhere near bad. You'll instantly be drawn in and never hear a sentence that sounds out of character, or ever hear a line of dialog and think "That actor had a rough night." Every character sounds and acts convincingly. The music is another great aspect. Again, there's nothing out of place, but some really sticks out in the best kind of way. Not only will some scenes stick with you after playing, you'll remember the music that player.

The game plays fantastically. It was written so amazingly well and is a joy to play. The puzzles, which are vary on difficulty always make sense, there's never a random answer to anything. You can choose where you want to go for the majority of the game, which leads you onto a self investigation, and makes the game feel a lot more open that it actually is. Any adventure game veteran will be able to fly through the puzzles but they'll still have a great time doing so. Though the most fun you'll have in this game is trying to find solutions. You'll show a used tissue you found in the sewer to every person you meet, just to hear their response. You'll investigate everything to hear what George has to say about it. Replaying through this game was a joy and, like any really good game, makes you feel for the characters. Broken Sword is the type of game that'll you'll talk about after playing.