BROKEN SWORD: THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLARS

Revisiting a point-and-click classic.

- Andy Kelly

NEED TO KNOW

RELEASED 1996

PUBLISHER Virgin Interactive

DEVELOPER Revolution Software

LINK revolution.co.uk

Broken Sword is a game that knows every great mystery needs a killer premise to hook you in. It begins with an American tourist on vacation in France, sipping coffee outside a Parisian cafe. Then a guy dressed as a clown blows it up. Most people would fly home and try to forget about it, but George Stobbart is not most people: He’s an adventure game protagonist. You know what those guys are like. Vacation be damned, he wants to know who tried to kill him—and he’s going to find out by picking up a bunch of random objects and solving puzzles with them.

Developed by UK studio Revolution Software and released in 1996, Broken Sword is one of the best point-and-click adventure games ever made. It’s beautiful to look at. The puzzles are great. The music is sublime. The characters are memorable. The story is full of twists and turns. And it’s funny. Like, really funny. It’s everything an adventure game should be, and age hasn’t dulled its edge one bit.

Four more Broken Sword games were released after this one, and while they all have their moments, the original remains the best in the series by quite a margin.

BLADE RUNNER