Broken Sword 2 The Smoking Mirror

Developer - Revolution
Publisher - Sony
Players - 1
Extras - Memory card, Mouse

The bit on the box

"Prepare for the end of the world...Legends tell of a Mayan god trapped inside a "smoking mirror". One day, so the legend goes, the god will escape and bring about the end of the world. That day has come! American tourist George Stobbart battles to save the world from the Mayan God of Sacrifice in this thrilling sequel to the best seller Broken Sword."

Graphics

Although Revolution have cut out the stuttery animation from the original Broken Sword (caused by the disc accessing in the middle of a motion, now the full animations are fully loaded before being played) the cartoon style graphics haven't really been changed much at all. For this type of game it works very well, though I have to say that the programmers didn't improve the cut scenes (they are impressive but still far too short and go by too quickly). The backgrounds are nicely drawn and try to represent different parts of the world, but it is still sometimes hard to spot exactly what you can interact with and what is merely for show.

Sounds

The sound effects are made up mainly of background noise (birds and automobiles) and the music is still used in an incidental fashion, reacting when the player travels to new destinations or finds something important. The key to the original Broken Sword was the excellent voice acting, and some familiar characters are back for the sequel except the character Nico seems to have a different female actress, a change which is not beneficial for the game as the terribly fake and at times slurred French accent makes the policeman from "'Allo 'Allo" sound fluent. The script for Nico is also lacklustre and made me wish they had just stuck with the George character rather than switching between the two. Nice idea, bad implementation.

Gameplay

As I mentioned above, you can now play both George and Nico in Broken Sword 2. However, you do not get to choose one or the other, but rather have to play both of them through various points in the adventure. This would have worked well if Nico's side of the story hadn't been so boring and if the character had even an ounce of the personality George has. The actual controls haven't changed, using an excellent icon system that can also utilize the PlayStation mouse if you have one. The story unfortunately is not as good as the first game, which is disappointing considering how much this type of game relies upon it.

I feel a verdict coming on

If you played the original Broken Sword and didn't like it, then there is nothing here that will change your feelings about the sequel. My main criticism about this game for those who enjoyed the original is that the puzzles seem alot easier and so the game may tend to be a little short in comparison. If you like this type of game though then this would be one of the better ones around, but the experience is so short-lived that it may be worth more of a rental than an actual purchase, as I never found a puzzle that really stumped me for any length of time. A nice enough sequel but if Revolution ever decide to do a third in the series, I'll be hoping they get an actress that actually sounds like the nationality she is supposed to be portraying (it really is that off-putting).

Review by D.R.T.Barrett