BROKEN SWORD - GBA

by Nintendo

Product Details

• ASIN: B00005YVTS
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 4.9 x 1 inches ; 1.6 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,296 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Adapted from one of the most popular PC games in Europe, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is the story of George Stobbard, an American in Paris who witnesses the theft of an ancient manuscript and the assassination of its owner. This manuscript was created in the 14th century by the order of the Knights Templar and points to where their legendary power has been hidden for more than 600 years. Its new owners intend to harness the power for their own sinister agenda. This version of the game re-creates the original's graphic-novel look, puzzles, locations, and characters, as well as the original soundtrack, while the interface and the game's control system is being redone to Game Boy Advance specifications.

Amazon.co.uk

In the annals of classic point-and-click adventures, the exploits of American tourist and private dick wannabe George Stobbard are probably second only to the monkey-related antics of one Guybrush Threepwood. Stobbard's first outing was in Circle of Blood, in which, trying to enjoy his vacation in Paris, he's thrown into a plot involving a 14th-century religious manuscript, a ruined rapier, and a clown. The story takes George from Paris to Spain, Ireland, North Africa, and eventually England on his quest to uncover the nefarious doings of a group of New Templars.

You would think that point-and-click would be a hard thing to translate onto a handheld, but Revolution (the original development team) has enhanced the game and faithfully reproduced the adventure with most of its bits intact. Firstly, it looks fantastic; for such a detailed game the backgrounds are rich and vibrant and the animation fluid. The soundtrack has also been reproduced and fans of the original will recognize Barrington Pheloung's musical themes. Secondly, the control system is brilliant; Revolution has added something they call a "vista system," which allows the player to circle around all the action points on the screen by pressing the left shoulder button.

The only thing lacking is the voice acting, which is replaced with scrolling text that works just as well; the same sense of humor is there in the script, and the puzzles are challenging without being frustrating. Broken Sword doesn't have the interaction or the longevity of Game Boy favorites such as Zelda, but it's well done, entertaining, and challenging, and will introduce a new generation to the delights of traipsing round a Paris sewer picking up used tissues. --Kristen Bowditch

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb and stunning, March 27, 2002

By 

"pat_meier" (Zurich, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BROKEN SWORD - GBA (Video Game)

I bought "Broken Sword" a few days ago and am still stunned by the cinematic quality of the sounds and views. This game is a dramatic departure from all the sprite/action games currently available on the Gameboy Advance: The scenes are lush and beautiful, the audio consists of a classical score and refreshing environment effects like birds twitter. These advances in audio and video help in creating an environment that is so encompassing that you forget your real surroundings and start living in the game - a feat that only happened to me before with "Myst".

For optimum enjoyment, you should progress slowly and talk to everybody as much as possible - this means quite a lot of text to read, but since it's witty and clever, you will get rewarded.

There are a few hitches that stand between this title and perfection. They are all small ones and I recommend this game wholeheartedly, but for completeness here they are:
- The intro sequence consist of only 12 stills. With a few more, the incident during the sequence could have been easier to understand. Since the sequence is described in the manual as well, I recommend reading this passage in the manual first.
- Some scenes are overloaden with details so that you can't make out all parts. Thanks to the vista menu this doesn't have a negative effect on the gameplay, though.
- Even though the musical score is very fitting, cinematic and interactive, in certain scene / situation combinations it starts to repeat after 10 minutes or so. Making it a bit longer would be even cooler, but this is only a minor fleabite.
- The audio seems to be even in stereo and the louder parts sound great with headphones, but if you listen to the more quiet parts in a silent room, some kind of "audio dithering" starts to happen where the music contains a lot of noise before suddenly die off completely. This is likely due to the 8 bit sound chip of the hardware, but recomposing the whole score with this in mind could have overcome the problem.
- Some scenes have JPEG artifacts if you look very closely and know how such artifacts normally look like.
- All sprites have a 1bit transparency map and are antialiased agains a fixed background color resulting in a few jaggies now and then when the scene has varying background colors.
- A new "vista" mode shows all the places in a scene you can interact with by displaying icons over them. When you are moving around, the same icons are displayed to indicate that you can now interact. Both modes look the same way, but since they do not behave the same way, things can get confusing (you can get a description _and_ interact while moving around, but you can only get a description and _not_ interact when using vista mode). But you can get used to it quickly, this is just for completeness.
- You can die. Every time you do you are falling out of the virtual world while you're fiddling around with savegames and are frustrated that you have to replay some scenes. Furthermore, you're always thinking about saving to minimize your frustration. A game where you can't die and the save function is only needed before turning the unit off would be even more encompassing.

Although this list is pretty long, the list of good things is even longer. But you might already know what to expect from other reviews, and I don't want to spoil things so I leave it at it. I think this game is targeted to a more mature audience. If you need lots of action and movement on your screen and frantic hyperactivity in your head, this is nothing for you. But if you're ready to delve into a virtual world, uncover secrets and experience a intruiging story firsthand, then "Broken Sword" might very, very well be the right game for you. :-)

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Classic-style Adventure, March 21, 2002

By 

J. Washington - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BROKEN SWORD - GBA (Video Game)

This game really has everything for those of us who love old Sierra Quest games and Lucasarts adventures such as Monkey Island or Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis. The game's story in particular will remind some of Indiana Jones. The interface is very well-developed, replacing the point-and-click gameplay with an inovative interface similar to the one found in Grim Fandango or Escape from Monkey Island, but with the addition of a "quick search" button to find the hot-spots on the screen. I found this to be extremely helpful when some of the more exact details are lost on the tiny screen.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys classic-style adventures. My only complaint would be that it has me hoping in vain for more adventure ports to the GBA from Lucasarts or Sierra, ones that almost certainly will never appear. For now, Broken Sword is definitely my favorite game for the GBA.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great adventure game. Great GBA game. Good Fun, March 23, 2003

By 

Squidgey Flint (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BROKEN SWORD - GBA (Video Game)

Broken Sword is a standard "adventure" game (eg. myst) delivered to the GBA and they've done a fine job of it (with a few small exceptions).

As adventure games go this one is pretty straight forward and doesn't require a mensa membership to make significant progress. The bulk of the tasks in the game are not too hard to figure out, yet there are a few stumpers in there as well.

Gameplay is clear. You can move the main character around the current screen and either interact with other characters, manipulate objects, or go to other screens.

The GBA rendering is nice. There are some dialog scenes which are easy to speed through if you wish although you occasionaly get critical information via dialog. There is one scene in which having the sound turned up might provide some value. Towards the end of the adventure, gameplay is not just puzzles but also reacting quickly to events.

Some dislikes:
- The game is good in that you are stuck in an area until to you solve that local puzzle. There is a bug in the game in which you can go to Spain before Syria which will cause you to get stuck in a scene without enough artifacts to get yourself out.
- You can keep multiple games running but you have to go through some gyrations to copy games between the 3 memory areas.

This is a good game to play and will definitely keep you entertained. It is easy enough to keep you engaged but hard enough to make you work for it.