Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars: Directors Cut
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Directors Cut, is an updated version of the original adventure game Broken Sword 1. It’s amazing how well the game holds up. It isn’t completely updated like the recent Secret of Monkey Island remake, but there are new character portraits and it’s polished a bit, overall it looks great.
It’s a good change of pace for adventure games. While we starting see a resurgence of comedy adventure games (Sam and Max, Monkey Island, etc), the serious stuff still hasn’t made a comeback. The recent drama adventure games we’ve had were Syberia 2 and Dreamfall for the original Xbox.
The story of Broken Sword is a mystery tale, Nico a reporter in Paris and George a tourist are caught up in a string murders and need to figure out what’s going on. The game is also laced with some humor as both Nico and George are pretty smart mouthed sarcastic characters. Those elements together create a memorable adventure experience.
The game begins with Nico arriving to an interview with Pierre Carchon, a famous politician. During the course of the interview an assassin dressed as a clown shoots Pierre dead. Nico promises Pierre’s wife that she will find the killer. George eventually meets Nico outside of a cafe where he was enjoying his vacation when a clown had arrived and planted a bomb killing a man inside that was supposed to meet with Nico. Together they decide to track down the killer.
For the wii version they’ve added some additional puzzles and an additional scenario at the beginning of the game where you play as Nico. It’s well designed and fun though it only lasts about an hour (much faster if you know what you’re doing).
The new wii puzzles are where the game falls short. No one’s learned that we DON’T want wiimote controls wedged into adventure games. In the new scenario there’s a combination safe you have to open. I knew the numbers but to actually input them correctly took nearly an hour. It’s ridiculous. It’s makes for bad design and it’s not fun at all.
All in all it is the best version of the game, and is still an amazing adventure. The wiimote controls do hurt it, but if you love point and click adventure games, or are just getting into them and want to try out a more dramatic one I recommend trying this out.
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