Broken Sword: Shadow
of the Templars
Developer - Revolution
Publisher - Sony
Players - 1
Extras - Memory card, Mouse
The bit on the box
"Broken Sword uses advanced programming,
animation and storytelling techniques to put you right into the heart of
the most amazing, outlandish, and exciting of tales. This is the culmination
of over two years' effort by a team of expert programmers and designers,
a veteran layout artist, professional cartoon movie animators and scriptwriters.
The result is a game unparalleled in terms of rich gameplay and sheer spectacle."
Graphics
For anyone who has owned a PC for a few years, and for
those who even owned an Amiga computer, this type of adventure game will
be extremely familiar. Broken Sword opts for sprite driven graphics
over the newer polygon technology, but does it in such a way as to look
very cartoonish. The backdrops have been drawn in the same vein, and so
it looks and feels almost like an interactive cartoon. The animation is
very well done, unfortunately though there is a price to be paid with small
load times throughout the game, slowing it down. There are also animated
cut-scenes, and while these are well designed they seem to run very fast
and are disappointingly short.
Sounds
The sound in Broken Sword is probably it's most
important element. Thoughts of the main character and conversations with
the other characters in the game are all done completely in full speech,
with optional text dialogue. The voice acting is very strong and of a high
quality, and the worldly accents are done fairly convincingly most of the
time (the Irish accents sound good, but the one Scottish accent is terribly
fake). The musical scores used in the game are excellent, and change depending
on
what the character is examining or doing, and also react if the character
gets in trouble. The music also varied with the different locations around
the world, although not always sounding like the music from those countries.
Gameplay
Broken Sword is a point and click adventure. Remember
those? I grew to love them on the Amiga and PC, but there are few on the
playstation. Of the ones that are available, this game would be one of
the better ones, although it can be frustrating in parts when some puzzles
get extremely hard. This stops the flow of the story, which is a pity because
in this case the story is very well written. The point and click control
system is easy to use, and better if you have a mouse, otherwise you are
left slowly dragging the pointer around the screen, which can be annoying
if you have to move it to a certain location on the screen quickly (which
happens a few times in the game, and at least twice lead to your death
if you are not quick enough). There is also alot of talking to do in the
game, or valuable hints and plotlines may be missed along the way, which
can be a pain if you come across someone who talks alot but tells you nothing
important, but you feel obliged to talk to him in case you forego something.
I feel a verdict coming on
If I was reviewing this game on the PC, I would have no
hesistation in recommending it. However, the majority of people who would
own a playstation are no doubt more interested in arcade games, or at least
adventures that include a bit more action than Broken Sword offers
(eg. Resident Evil and Tomb Raider). Also, while the graphics
are bright and well drawn, the influx of polygonal games out there may
keep this game buried on the software shelves. It seems to be a shame that
most of the games with the best plots and storylines tend to end up being
technically inferior to their competition, and so often get bypassed. If
you like this style of slow brain-using game, then it could be worth a
purchase, otherwise don't bother.
Review by D.R.T.Barrett
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