Interface problems don't end there. You sometimes have to align yourself too precisely with a hotspot for the game to make you aware of it via a little star icon. It's even worse when you have to perfectly align yourself with a narrow object for climbing. This oversensitivity makes it too easy to overlook things or waste time micromanaging your character's movements. Making characters run creates more annoyances: Whenever they brush against an object, they slow to a crawl, requiring you to back away and start running again.
To heighten the action, Broken Sword includes occasional "action events," but these are an example of good intentions gone awry. These events call to mind games like Dragon's Lair or Shenmue. Every once in a while, you'll need to make a split-second button press to hop off a crumbling ledge, for example, or dodge a speeding car. The first time each of these events occurs, you rarely have enough time to react since hitting the button often doesn't seem to register for some reason. Your character then dies, and you get to try the sequence over again until you get it right. This repetition sucks a lot of the fun out of the game since you have to sit through the same dialogue or cutscene material again before the action event starts. It's frustrating that you can't skip scenes or dialogue you've already seen and heard.
Summaries of the first two games bring you up to speed.
None of these problems are game-killers, but they do detract from all the things Broken Sword does so well. You get to solve an interesting conspiracy and murder mystery that takes you from the Congo to Paris, Prague, and other exciting locales. A mysterious villain named Susarro is trying to tap into geomantic energy, powerful currents that run through the earth. It seems like he's really onto something because the earth's weather patterns have been going haywire. George, a patent lawyer from Idaho, stumbles onto this plot while trying to meet an inventor in the Congo. Meanwhile, a Parisian hacker has managed to decrypt a mystic manuscript with clues to the energy, but he gets murdered just as the game's other hero, French journalist Nico Collard, is about to meet him for an interview. Suddenly, she finds herself framed for the murder. With a great sense of pacing, the game smoothly switches back and forth between the George and Nico episodes, and eventually the two old adventuring buddies are reunited to fight the evil that threatens the world.
As you travel the globe and uncover the plot, you'll enjoy two of Broken Sword's biggest strengths: sharp writing and a cast of memorable characters. The story is filled with funny, dramatic, and even touching moments, not to mention a rogues' gallery of colorful people. In Glastonbury, England, for example, George lands in the middle of a hilarious imbroglio involving a retired British Army colonel with a bad temper and a shotgun, his randy daughter who's run away from home to assert her womanhood, a monumentally pompous hippie who runs a New Age shop, and an Irish BBC TV host with an almost violent passion for poetry.
When you're not talking with these eccentric characters, you'll be solving puzzles. A few puzzles are really tough, but most of them are interesting and reasonably easy, too, making the game pretty newbie-friendly. Whether you're a first-timer or an adventure veteran, you'll likely tire of the omnipresent block puzzles, though, where you have to align crates or hunks of stone to create platforms for climbing. It's annoying, too, that you run across innumerable locked doors while searching for items. It wastes your time as you futilely try them all and also reduces the immersion by reminding you how linear the game really is as you're shunted down preset paths. Since the story and characters and locales are so much fun, though, it's hard to complain too loudly about these weaknesses.
The game's strange humor: One of your clues is a dirty pair of boxer shorts.
Even if Broken Sword can at times be frustrating to play, it's a joy to behold. The graphics sure aren't cutting edge, but the attention to detail, vibrant colors, and smooth animations give the game its own attractive style. (The "idle" animations of Nico repeatedly brushing her shoulder or stretching are odd and distracting, though.) The wonderfully elegant and evocative soundtrack varies from bold fanfares to jaunty comic bits to pensive piano interludes to suit the locales and situations. The voice-overs really bring the game to life, too. By and large, the actors are really acting here instead of just lazily reading their lines like you find in so many games. Unfortunately, the voice-overs highlight the game's biggest flaw, a major sound bug. Occasionally, dialogue can cut out, a character will make two statements at the same time, or two characters will speak over each other entirely. This bug can ruin the mood or make it hard to know what on earth is going on when you miss vital dialogue.
It's a shame problems like that mar Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon. With its blend of cinematic style, 3D immersion, sharp writing, and likable characters, this is otherwise an adventure game that does the genre proud.
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (PC):
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