Fabulous Game (Broken Sword II (PC))

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Broken Sword II (PC)
Date:	23/02/02 (355 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Fun

Disadvantages: Not many

Broken Sword 2 was one of the last of a now extinct genre of game, the point and click adventure, of which the most famous example must be the Monkey Island series. Both the original game and this sequel proved quite popular on both the PC and Playstation, but as technology has moved on there are simply better ways of making adventure games. That doesn't mean that this isn't a good game to play, because it certainly is.

You play George Stobbart, the games main character. In the first game George became entwined with the Knights Templar, and managed to save the world. In the process he met his girlfriend, Nico, a journalist. After returning to America to visit his ill grandfather George returns to find Nico trying to uncover a drug smuggling ring. Unfortunately she gets mixed up in much more, and when she gains possession of a Mayan stone she is kidnapped, and George is left tied to a chair in a burning house with a tarantula heading towards him. And that's where the game starts!

What you have in essence is a puzzle game. George can visit a variety of locations, talking to people and finding items along the way. You can then use these items at other locations, and therefore progress through the game. For example at the start of the game you find a pot, which when you examine contains a house key which you can use to get out the door. At another point you can steal some absinthe from an ex-gendarme (he lost his job because George stole a tripod from the museum he was working at in the original game), later on you spike the drink of a man in an art gallery, he then falls over and distracts the owners attention, so you can then sneak in to the back of the shop! Talking to people often reveals vital clues, and to this end you can lead the topic of conversation by clicking on one of a number of items.

If there is a problem with the game it has to be that it is rather linear, you go from start to finish with very few distractions. Yo
u may get stuck on a few puzzles, but once you've figured them out you're off again. There isn't much of a challenge in the game, although you need to think quite a lot you don't need to be a mastermind.

Without a great challenge the game is carried along by it's storyline, which is thankfully quite good. While not as much of laugh as the Monkey Island series George has his own dry sense of humour which will raise a few chuckles every now and then, and generally the game doesn't take itself too seriously.

Graphics wise the game is quite a treat, although it's showing it's age a bit now the graphics are quite cartoony and everything is quite easy to see. Important moments are shown by videos, which are also cartoony but are quite impressive.

Throughout the game the characters speak rather than text appearing on the screen, which is something that is missing from a lot of games. This makes it quite a lot easier to follow the game, and is quite good as all the characters have pretty mad acccents!

Overall this game is well worth playing, as it it's sequel, both of which are available for £5 on the Sold Out budget range (www.sold-out.co.uk). The games is easy to install, with a whole host of support being included on the CD.

A top notch game!



Minum Requirements

486 DX66+ (Pentium recommended)
16Mb RAM
66Mb HDD Space
1Mb Video Card
Sound Card
2x CD-ROM drive
Windows 95+

Summary: