A Slide & tap adventure

I took a walk down memory lane recently, via the Directors Cut of Broken Sword on the DS. A little like being a devoted Sega fanboy, I probably enjoyed these games more than LucasArts' adventures back in the day, purely because I played them first. I'm of course talking only about the 2D point and click adventures in the series - the 3rd was a boring crate pushing simulator that I never finished and I didn't even know that they made a fourth one (which at least goes back to the point and click approach apparently). I think I can now honestly admit that the LucasArts titles are better games - I still got some enjoyment out of this but I can see the flaws now with more experienced eyes.

This being the Directors Cut, it starts off with a new section that takes place before the original game started, with the player taking control of the female lead, Nico. I'd already played a little bit of this section as I think it was available online when this version first came out. I suppose it wasn't too bad but it didn't really have the urgency of the original opening so I found myself waiting for this to be done so that I could back to what I knew. It might have been better to still have the same opening with George but dip into Nico's story later - which is what happens anyway so I don't know why it was so important to have this come first. I also found that the puzzles in Nico's section felt pretty different from the original game - within 20 minutes I encountered 2 difficult block sliding puzzles that would have been at home in one of the Professor Layton games (I like the Layton games on the whole but I always hate these kind of puzzles!). I can't remember if what Nico discovers has some relevance to later games in the series but either way her story didn't really feel like it came to much of a conclusion.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the DS version is that it doesn't have any voice acting. I'm sure most of it was pretty cheesy but that was also part of its charm. Obviously I don't know the full details behind why the voice acting was removed but DS cartridges can apparently go up to around 500MB in size, with a corresponding increase in cost to the developer. It seems to me like they could have compressed the audio sufficiently to fit onto a cart but somewhere along the line someone probably made a decision to cut it from a cost point of view. I know that the Wii version of it does have the voice acting but I can almost guarantee that I wouldn't have got around to playing that version. Plus I think that the stylus controls suit it better than the Wiimote would have, in my experience the pointer control is usually still a bit jumpy.

Speaking of how it controls, I think that using a stylus is probably the best method of playing a point and click adventure I've ever come across. It also has a great system of highlighting areas that you can interact with that are near your current position, which gets rid of the problem of hunting the screen for a single pixel that is important. There were only a few occasions where the small size of the screen made it a little difficult to spot something but normally they just leap out at you. I'm not sure if they also simplified some puzzles from the original game, I'm sure anyone who's played the original will have bad memories about the goat in Ireland but I managed to get past it first time here. There is also a section later on where you can actually end up dying if you do something wrong but I think it now automatically pops up your item menu to make it easier to do the right thing. I think you can still die just by choosing the wrong conversation option a little earlier but obviously I picked the right one from memory. This is clearly one of the game's major flaws though, especially given that there are no autosaves and normally nothing to suggest that you might need to save regularly.

Even with the extra sections added in this version, it comes across feeling a little short by modern standards. I don't know if I just underestimated how long I got stuck for in the original (bearing in mind that I would have to trek to the library to search the net for hints instead of using an app on my phone). This is despite the fact that I still found myself a bit confused about what you were trying to accomplish at some points, the diary of what you had done recently was quite good but often didn't have any hints of what to do next. The fact that George and Nico get together at the end of the game seems like 'just because', as they haven't really spent that much time together through the game. I guess they are supposed to have liked each other from the start but needed a push to show it, I wonder if the lack of voice acting made this feel more rushed as it'll always take less time to read something in your head than out loud.

I had forgotten most of the story and I was quite surprised at how much it shared with Assassin's Creed, the modern day Neo Templars and the Hashashin attempting to stop them. This takes a more realistic and sympathetic approach to the Templars of the past though, making the Neo-Templars out to be unworthy of their ancestors and not shying away from the horrible way that the original order was dissolved. Assassin's Creed neatly steps over this time period and gives no real explanation for how the order has survived the inquisitions. I can personally brush over the approach taken in AC but I'm sure some people might view it as disrespectful and it's probably convinced a fair amount of people that it just might be true.

I'd be quite interested to play the second game again too, it's sad that this didn't get a remake as well. That still seems like the bigger and better game in my memories but I don't know if they are a little rose tinted. I certainly remember one section very well as it was available on a cover mounted demo disk that came with a PC magazine. It involved trying to get past a guard into some docks if I remember rightly and showed off some neat puzzles and improved animations. I don't really play PC games anymore, so even if I could track down my original copy I don't really have a convenient way of playing it. Maybe it's for the best to leave it as a happy memory and not have my impressions of it shattered in the cold, hard light of day.