Customer Reviews

Secrets Of The Ark: Broken Sword IV

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Charles Cecil of Revolution Software originally planned Broken Sword as a trilogy, but due to fan demands, American George Stobbart and Parisian photojournalist Nico Collard are hot on the trail of yet another conspiracy involving the Church and the occult (Templars). In previous Broken Sword titles, George and Nico traveled the globe investigating murders, cover-ups, and conspiracies revolving around the Knights Templar. Their fourth outing proves to be more of the same, beginning in New York and spreading to Istanbul, Arizona, Rome, and the Vatican.

There are several changes since the last Broken Sword game (Sleeping Dragon), the most glaring of which is the outsourcing of the game's graphics to Sumo Digital. The graphics are less polished, the colors flat, pathfinding is frustrating, animations are jerky, and most annoyingly, the bloated inventory (I was carrying the same items twenty hours later!). The 3D character modeling in cutscenes was horrible, and looked ten years old.

Also, the backstory is not as well developed as previous games. The character dialogue is, well, perfectly in character for George, with many witty comments, but the biggest problem here is that the story doesn't make you feel invested in George's adventure. Also, the part of the game that takes place in Phoenix was easily the weakest part, bordering on the absurd. Perhaps most offensively, the ending is all of.....thirty seconds. No, I'm not exaggerating. After you complete your final action, the ending is less than a minute, which left me deeply dissatisfied after spending twenty hours getting there.

The puzzles are, for the most part, intuitive: I only had to consult a walkthrough once or twice, and the answers were right in front of me. The unwieldy inventory makes combining items difficult, and you have no way to get rid of extra items that you've accumulated. Gone are the hated box puzzles from Broken Sword 3, and in its place is an enjoyable substitute, the "computer hacking" puzzles. I loved this touch, which seemed a perfectly believable addition to George's universe. He uses his PDA to hack into servers to look up information and override electronics. These are logic puzzles more than anything else, and can be solved by trial and error. Only one is a timed puzzle that has the potential to kill George if you fail, otherwise you have unlimited time (the only limit is your patience!). Like BS3, there are several "sneak" portions where you have to avoid detection by guards and monks.

However, there are several good things happening in Angel of Death (Secrets of the Ark in North America). The music is excellent, as usual: generally low key, with local touches in each of the locations. There is an "aha!" theme that plays when you solve a puzzle, providing useful feedback. There are several unusual locations to explore, including a a shady salami factory with mob connections, a communion wafer factory and Topkapi Palace (previously explored in the Discovery Channel's excellent FMV adventure Byzantine: The Betrayal). The voice acting, particularly George, was excellent as usual, except for a few weak spots (the African-American character slipped into a native British accent every other line). And the new Nico will be a source of debate: Cecil chose a native French speaker, but oddly enough, I'm so accustomed to the previous Nicos that the "real" French actress sounded fake! I felt detached from Nico in this game; she's in it only briefly, and is wasted in the Phoenix portion. And you get to play as George and Nico once again. Secrets of the Ark will definitely appeal to fans of the Broken Sword series, but there are too many glaring inconsistencies that may put off new players. There is a patch available on the game's official website that corrects some gameplay issues.

The Good:

+ You get to play as George and Nico

+ Music

+ Choice of locations

+ No more crate puzzles like BS3

The Bad:

- 3D Character modeling in cutscenes and close-ups looks ten years old

- Poor controls

- Noticeable lag on older computers / jerky animation makes precise movements impossible

- Plot holes / lack of backstory

- Nico's downplayed role

- Ending

When I first got this game, I thought I made a mistake. The controls were extremely sluggish making it impossible to control objects and complete any of the timed puzzles. I met the minimum specs for playing the game, so why didn't it work? Answer: get a game-quality graphics card and like ATI or NVIDA and the game plays smoothly. Once I got past the technical frustrations, I settled into the game. I did not encounter any other bugs whats-so-ever. The storyline is fun and new, and humorous at times. The puzzles are clever and not too hard, although on a couple I had to get a clue on-line (I hate doing that!) so they are not all easy. This is a great adventure game for new and seasoned gamers alike. I racked up 24 hours of game play so I got my money's worth. I would definitely buy the sequel to this game.

Broken Sword IV is your standard point and click adventure game with plenty of funny if not campy humor. Though due to it's often frustrating puzzles and overly subdued nature this game will only strongly appeal to true fans of the point and click genre.

Graphics- Though the graphics look good on a good computer, often times they lack the color and shading to properly immerse the player into the enviroment. Oh also, at first you'll think the game is true 3d, well it's not. You may have trouble navigating your way around until you get familiar with the controls. The game mostly relies on shifting camera angles with an occasional dip into true 3d if you run down a hall Etc.

Sound- The music doesn't really stand out in my mind as anything worth mentioning. In fact I think I kept it off most of the time. The sound effects are suitable for being mostly peripheral and easily ignored, it's the character dialogue and the game's humor that shines.

Gameplay- The game is very subdued in it's nature and the action is sparse or non existent. There is no combat and most of the action takes place in cut scenes after you solve puzzles that are often frustratingly hard until you figure them out, then you'll find yourself frustrated that you didn't figure these same puzzles out faster. Most of the game consists of solving puzzles via collecting, combining and or using items on different parts of the enviroment. There is a LOT of dialogue to sit through in Broken Sword IV as many of the game's puzzles won't be accessable until you listen to certain character's entire dialogue sequence. This can often be frustrating in itself as you will try every combination possible of a puzzle, only to finally cave in and talk to a nearby npc, then go back and try the exact same thing and have it work. GRRR! Thankfully this dialogue, though superfluous drives the story well enough and is humorous enough not to become a bore.

Story- It's a good solid story, if not a bit cliche. Though sadly like many games that rely on story Broken Sword IV's story starts with a bang then ends all too abruptly, not wrapping up tightly enough to fully satisfy the player. Poor closure for a game that is mostly story driven.

Overall- Broken Sword IV is definitely a rental that again, will only really satisfy true fans of the point and click genre. Unfortunately I'm not sure you can rent this game as I believe it is only for the PC. So maybe get it cheap and play it on a rainy Sunday in winter when you have nothing else at all to do. It'll be like watching a straight to video thriller, better than a sharp stick up [...]

I think this game would be a lot of fun if the controls didn't lag so much. Like a few of the other reviewers, I have a brand new computer that far surpasses the requirements for this game, and still it runs slow. I have even turned the graphic settings all the way down, and that didn't help either. For now I have given up on the game, beause it is too hard to play, but hopefully the company will release a patch one day. I was really looking forward to playing this game, as I have enjoyed the other Broken Sword games, but I am sorely disappointed. As I said before, it would probably be a lot of fun, if it wasn't so hard to control.

When I had finished this game, I was not very happy, I found the game a bit empty, compeared to the other three games. I am a big fan of the BrokenSword serie, and have had alot of fun playing them.
This game is fun, George still got his funny coments. It could have been a super game if the creators of it had put in more work, there are places where you feel you you don't know whats going on and the whole situation feels stupid.
But it is fun, you will enjoy, but it is not as good as the three before it.

I'm a huge fan of the Broken Sword series and was very excited to hear that they were making a fourth installment. But it seems that the developers have created a 'broken' product. Out of the box the game was totally unplayable. I'd start a game up and it was snail pace slow frame rates. I thought at first my computer was not up to the task of running it but then i saw the system requirements which are:

Minimum:

* OS: Windows® XP/Vista(tm)

* CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium® 4 Processor

* RAM: 256 MB

* Disk Space: 2.6 GB Available

* CD/DVD-ROM: 16x

* DirectX®: Version 9.0c Required (Included)

* Video Card: 128 MB Shader Model 1.1 Compatible Video Card

* Sound: Windows® Compatible Sound Card

* Input: Keyboard, Mouse

My specs are as follows:

Amd 64 Dual Core Processor 3800 (2.0 ghz)

3 Gigs of PC 5300 Ram

Nvidia 7950 Gt 256mb Graphics card

Vista Home Premium.

I've got well over the minimum but still it won't run properly. I even installed it on another computer running xp with specs above minimum and still it won't work.

Normally I'm very accecpting of the reality that games don't work right for every configuration upon release. Developers will then release patches to address these problems. I've had the game for almost 2 months and I've not seen any patches released by the company. That is why I'm giving this game 1 star. This is a totally unacceptable amount of time to wait for a patch on a pc game. Its too bad that the Developer and Publisher didn't care enough about this game to give it the attention it needed. I never had these kind of problems with Broken Sword 3.

What a disappointment! On my old computer, which met all of the specs asked for, this thing crawled along and was unplayable. I was very excited when I got my new computer, so I could finally play the sequel to one of my favorite computer games. I installed it, only to discover this does not support Nvidia GeForce 8800 video cards, among others. I did some internet searching, and discovered this is a common problem for people. There is a patch for the European version of the game that corrects this problem, but no patch for this version. It is the same game with a different title, but you still can't use the Angel of Death (European version of this game) patch to fix this. It's frustrating, because you would think The Adventure Company itself would care enough about its own product to put out a patch, but apparently not.

I expected a little more from this game. Previous BS games in this series were also fun, but I expected more from the Ark. Controls are horrible. Dialogue is much too long and unnecessary in spots. Should have spent more time refining the graphics, especially any involving the hands. Lip synch is poor. But what the heck...it's only a game.

Although the story and graphics are good enough (not astonishing), the control of characters and interactive object is not something you can enjoy.

This game loads properly on only one out of every three attempts. When it does load properly, the main character sometimes goes someplace completely different than where I click. If I don't do things in exactly the proper order, I can't get to the next clue. For example, at one point I had to go from a hotel desk to another building, talk to a guard, and come back to the hotel desk to find a clue. But when I came back, I did other things first and by then the clue was not there. Thanks to a walk-thru, I returned to talk to the guard about the same thing, and then came back and went directly to the clue. Not my idea of fun. I gave up.