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Backlog: Broken Sword

The Shadow of the Templars, no less.

This is the first game in the infamous Broken Sword Trilogy, until they make a fourth game. In this game you play George Stobbard, an American Tourist who's having a nice holiday in Paris until the cafe he hangs out at explodes.
George, being of the Aggressive American kind, vows to destroy the world, starting with the people who spilled his coffee so violently, and then probably moving on to muslims, if those aren't in fact the same people.

Well, okay, that's not exactly how it goes but it was pretty close.
This game is what people call a "point'n'clicker", which meant that initially I was pointing at the screen waiting for something to click until I read the instruction manual.
I played this game on my PSX, and I do not have a mouse, and I can tell you that using a controller for this kind of game can be rather tiresome, since the movement is so slow. You can speed the cursor up by holding the square button down, which helps, but it's not ideal. If you've got the PSX Mouse (tm) this would be a good time to use it.

Let me start off by saying that PnC's are not very action-packed. All you do is read lines and solve puzzles and click your mouse a LOT. If you can stand hours and hours of this, you're in for a real treat.

Cos the fact of the matter is, this game is really really good. It looks absolutely astonishing, beautifully detailed, colorful environments, great animation, a majestic orchestral soundtrack (for as far as there IS any music, which is, hardly ever) and a great sense of humor.
Voice acting varies from iffy to very good. The main character George is definitely the highlight of the game, which is just as well, since you spend the entire game with him. He's got a great voice, very relaxed, but also nice and sarcastic at times.

The game starts out in Paris, but you get to travel to other European countries, so the game is rife with ethnic humor and such. One of my favorites was this short bit of conversation between George who's trying to rent the room next to the room the bad guy is residing and the Effeminate Maitre d' of an expensive Hotel going something like this:

George:"I'd like room 315, please"
Maitre:"I'm sorry Sir, but it's already been rented out"
George:"Rats!"
Maitre:"No Sir, Dutch"

Hur Hur Hur. Hur.

But the humor is actually good in the rest of the game though, and the story is really interesting and full of plot twists and surprises. And they've actually done their homework cos it's full of biblical references and folk-tales and stuff.
The Knights Templar play an important role in the story, which is interesting too.
I've read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which was total rubbish by the way, thank you for asking, and it touched upon the same subject only not nearly as interestingly. Most of it looked liked it was ripped of from this game actually, even though it probably wasn't, including the French girl at the main character's side whom he ultimately falls in love with. Dan Brown sucks, and his books should be burned, did I mention that already?

I have two major gripes with this game though. You really need hawk-eye vision, and the Highest Defition TV possible. I think this game was made for PC, or something that DOES have a high resolution, unlike a TV, and they decided later that maybe it would do well on consoles too. Sometimes you need to pick up or use items that are nearly impossible to see. Many was the time I got stuck, having no clue what to do, simply because I didn't spot one off-color pixel. On a PC it's probably more visible, but on a TV, no. And I was playing with a rather good quality Scart Cable, too, imagine if you've only got those little yellow plugs that suck, you won't be able to see anything.

Secondly, untypically, there are a couple of moments where speed is essential to survive, because, yes, you can die in this game, which is an aspect of PnC's I don't particularly welcome. A couple of puzzles depend on how quickly you can move your mouse to a safe spot, or react to dangerous circumstances, but you never know when these are coming. You might be breaking your brain over how to solve a weird puzzle, when the solution turns out to be you just have to be faster in moving your cursor somewhere else, which is really stupid. This is not an action game, so don't try to disguise it as one.
Maybe the creators thought that this kind of game was lacking in action too much too.

Otherwise, most puzzles are pretty logical, and you'll feel better for solving them and advancing in the game. There's a great variety of environments, and the story is pretty cool, with some explosions and murders thrown in for good measure.

Make no mistake, I LOVE this game, but it is bothered by the points I mentioned above, and by the fact that you're just reading and pointing and clicking all the time, which is an innate problem to this kind of game, and it depends on your own patience if this can entertain you long enough.
So I give this an 8.3, but with a strong recommendation for anyone who likes this kind of game, cos it won't disappoint.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:01 AM