Friday, August 18, 2006
Astraware Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars mini review
Astraware very kindly sent me a copy of their latest release on the Windows Mobile platform to check out. I have never been an avid adventure gamer and have never played this game on the PC so I am looking at this title purely from the mobile perspective. This game sees you following George Stobbart in his quest to unravel the secrets of this murder / mystery adventure set in Paris.
The first thing of note is the large install; 110Mb might seem a lot by Pocket PC standards but with the low cost of high capacity storage cards, this should not cause an issue for the vast majority.
Starting up the game brings up a movie intro which is well rendered although appears to be scaled up to the VGA resolution of my Pocket PC. Going into the game proper however, I was very impressed that this title is rendered in a native VGA resolution which looks superb and adds to this type of game.
This title follows the point and click style of adventure where you interact by tapping on different items looking for information and to perform actions. Items nearby your character are highlighted however tapping the small gears icon in the bottom left corner toggles onscreen highlights to all items that can be interacted with by placing a small gears icon on top of them. This saves you from blindly tapping looking for direction and makes the chances of you missing something vital far less likely. Use of this of course is at the discretion of the player and while it does offer a helping hand, you still need to use the information wisely to make real progress. The small magnifying glass next to the gears icon allows you to then tap on an object to get more information on it without any physical involvement. Interacting with people brings you to well scripted scenes using the game engine with speech both articulate and of high production. This makes the whole gaming experience very seamless and engaging. As well as speech, sound effects are used well in different scenes and music will come into the fray at opportune moments keeping the senses alive.
Progress through the game is relatively linear and while you may get stuck at certain points while you work out what needs to be done, you are never in any real danger of getting lost as such. Some puzzles require interaction between different objects, some of which you may have collected at an earlier stage by tapping on them. These items are stored away in your inventory which can be viewed as required by accessing the icon in the top left.
Moving your character around the screen is as simple as tapping somewhere accessible on the ground which starts him walking to that destination in a fluid animation. The screen will also smoothly scroll to bring him back to the centre to provide a good view of your surroundings. As you open up different areas in the game, a map of Paris is presented that allows you to navigate your way between locations making returning to previous places a simple experience.
Options allow you to configure volume and language and a very handy option of enabling subtitles for the dialogue which keeps you in the loop should you have the audio muted. You can also change the brightness and orientation to get things set up exactly how you like them. Entering the menu from the bottom right icon allows you to save your progress in one of the available save slots or to restore from a previous save. You can also restart the game and exit from this menu. You can also exit the game at any point by using the cross in the top right which auto saves your progress and exits immediately making this an easy game to play for short periods at a time.
I must admit to being very impressed with Broken Sword thanks to its excellent visuals and scripting and the fact that it is simple to pick up and play whilst remaining very involving. This looks great at any resolution but especially crisp in native VGA and is well worth the sizeable install; the screens here can’t convey the impact the smooth animation has. I certainly don’t consider myself much of an adventure gamer but I do find this game to be very enjoyable and I imagine the majority of people out there will find something to like in this title. I certainly would recommend it highly as this is a great title for the Pocket PC platform.
For more details and purchasing, please visit the Astraware website and if you register on their site you can currently get a $10 discount.
The first thing of note is the large install; 110Mb might seem a lot by Pocket PC standards but with the low cost of high capacity storage cards, this should not cause an issue for the vast majority.
Starting up the game brings up a movie intro which is well rendered although appears to be scaled up to the VGA resolution of my Pocket PC. Going into the game proper however, I was very impressed that this title is rendered in a native VGA resolution which looks superb and adds to this type of game.
This title follows the point and click style of adventure where you interact by tapping on different items looking for information and to perform actions. Items nearby your character are highlighted however tapping the small gears icon in the bottom left corner toggles onscreen highlights to all items that can be interacted with by placing a small gears icon on top of them. This saves you from blindly tapping looking for direction and makes the chances of you missing something vital far less likely. Use of this of course is at the discretion of the player and while it does offer a helping hand, you still need to use the information wisely to make real progress. The small magnifying glass next to the gears icon allows you to then tap on an object to get more information on it without any physical involvement. Interacting with people brings you to well scripted scenes using the game engine with speech both articulate and of high production. This makes the whole gaming experience very seamless and engaging. As well as speech, sound effects are used well in different scenes and music will come into the fray at opportune moments keeping the senses alive.
Progress through the game is relatively linear and while you may get stuck at certain points while you work out what needs to be done, you are never in any real danger of getting lost as such. Some puzzles require interaction between different objects, some of which you may have collected at an earlier stage by tapping on them. These items are stored away in your inventory which can be viewed as required by accessing the icon in the top left.
Moving your character around the screen is as simple as tapping somewhere accessible on the ground which starts him walking to that destination in a fluid animation. The screen will also smoothly scroll to bring him back to the centre to provide a good view of your surroundings. As you open up different areas in the game, a map of Paris is presented that allows you to navigate your way between locations making returning to previous places a simple experience.
Options allow you to configure volume and language and a very handy option of enabling subtitles for the dialogue which keeps you in the loop should you have the audio muted. You can also change the brightness and orientation to get things set up exactly how you like them. Entering the menu from the bottom right icon allows you to save your progress in one of the available save slots or to restore from a previous save. You can also restart the game and exit from this menu. You can also exit the game at any point by using the cross in the top right which auto saves your progress and exits immediately making this an easy game to play for short periods at a time.
I must admit to being very impressed with Broken Sword thanks to its excellent visuals and scripting and the fact that it is simple to pick up and play whilst remaining very involving. This looks great at any resolution but especially crisp in native VGA and is well worth the sizeable install; the screens here can’t convey the impact the smooth animation has. I certainly don’t consider myself much of an adventure gamer but I do find this game to be very enjoyable and I imagine the majority of people out there will find something to like in this title. I certainly would recommend it highly as this is a great title for the Pocket PC platform.
For more details and purchasing, please visit the Astraware website and if you register on their site you can currently get a $10 discount.
