Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse (PSV) Review by Jason Bonnar

Game Review: Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse - Episode 1 (PS Vita)

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse - Episode 1 is a point and click adventure game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. The legacy of the Broken Sword saga is unquestionable and has been since its inception on the original PlayStation in 1996. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars introduced players to a new era of the point and click adventure on games consoles featuring the central character of the series George Stobbart’s investigations into all manner of criminal behaviour, which is offset by his own trademark humour and sarcasm. The Broken Sword series has spawned five games and remakes of the first two games with each being a commercial and critical success with the series having won a number of awards and many award nominations from Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars winning best adventure from Generation 4 and best quest from Quest magazine in 1997 to Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon winning the best adventure game of 2003 from Just Adventure and earning nominations in best design, best PC game and best adventure game from the British Academy Video Games Awards in 2003 as well as a nomination for excellence in writing from the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2004, alongside many other well deserved awards and award nominations that have only further cemented Broken Sword’s legacy in the point and click adventure genre.

The story starts in a Catalan village as it is stormed by Spanish fascists as they are in search of a particular painting in the year 1937. Fast forward to present day Paris and a robbery and murder is committed to steal the very same painting that a priest claims to have evil powers from a curse that was forged by the devil himself. George Stobbart and Nico Collard must investigate the murder and robbery until they get to the bottom of who stole the painting and committed the murder, alongside attempting to find if the painting really is cursed with an evil presence.

The dialogue provides a lot of humour particularly from the lead character George Stobbart in a story and dialogue written by the creator, writer and director of the Broken Sword series Charles Cecil. There is a scene early on in the game in which an art critic you need to speak to has fainted; after you have sprayed some overpowering cologne towards his face to wake him up he asks George, “What was that? It smells like…like the seventies”. There are humorous and sarcastic comments throughout the dialogue that will always give you a laugh, which is a really positive design choice as I have always believed that a script that can put a smile on your face is always a script well written.

The character design is pretty good as all of the characters have their unique looks, styles, mannerisms and voices that clearly differentiate one character from another. George Stobbart is an excellent lead character with his humour and sarcasm and Nico Collard is just as good as a helpful investigative journalist with her charm and intelligence, alongside an entire supporting cast of brilliant characters that each standout from one another, regardless of if they are the good or bad guys.

The environment design is just as good as the character design as they merge together to create many amazing scenes played out across some equally as extravagant locations, such as modern day Paris with many great background details allowing the surroundings to feel as you would expect in a real world scenario.

The puzzles are usually all connected in some way, which is a positive design choice as it means that an entire set of puzzles are relevant to each other and important to your progression through the story which makes them feel much more rewarding after you have solved them and provides more of a purpose to the puzzles, rather than just being a single randomly placed standalone puzzle. A great example of this is from early on in the game were you have to blackmail a code to a safe out an art critic by proving that he was lying about his whereabouts, while having Nico distract the investigator who had just entered as you were about to open the safe. However, Nico cannot enter the art gallery as the investigator’s guard has been instructed to not allow anyone in; when you figure out a rather amusing

way past the guard, you will find that the investigator is only interested in blood related evidence, which you deliberately falsify using tomato source from the underside of a pizza box that was conveniently dropped on the floor by George earlier on, although the tomato source does have a piece of chewing gum stuck in the centre of it that has to be removed with Nico’s press card. The tomato source having been made to look exactly like a blood splatter on the floor is just the distraction required for the investigator to be distracted to buy George enough time to sneak into the safe and find multiple threads of evidence that provides the leads to guide him in the appropriate direction for his investigation.

There is an optional tutorial that allows you to learn how to play the game before venturing into the investigation that you will encounter in the story of the single player campaign. The tutorial will teach you how to pick-up objects and use them to interact with your surroundings and characters throughout the game, alongside such abilities as observing objects and combining two items together, such as batteries and a torch to be able to operate and shine the torch.

The inventory allows you to collect items that are important to your investigation and use them to progress in the appropriate direction. Items can be assessed or used to interact with the surrounding environments or perhaps even used to gain leverage over another character that otherwise refuses to co-operate in aiding you in your investigation by effectively blackmailing that character with evidence that could incriminate him or her as a suspect.

The controls are well mapped to the Vita, especially considering that the control scheme is almost entirely centred upon the touch screen. The only face button that is used throughout the entire control scheme is the triangle button, which produces the contents of your inventory. As you explore the environments around you; you interact with objects by tapping the touch screen in the area of the object and then tap again to further observe the object, while you can talk to people by tapping on the

character and tapping on the conversation icon, followed by tapping on the appropriate icon that best represents the conversation that you want to have at that given time; you can explore your inventory by tapping on the bag that represents the inventory icon to the bottom left of the touch screen, which you can assess by tapping on them or using them to interact with your surroundings by dragging the item onto an object or person; and you can make your character walk by tapping an area of the touch screen. Tapping the inventory icon to the inventory icon to the bottom left of the touch screen will also produce a menu along the top left that allows you to pause the game; ask for hints when you are finding a puzzle rather difficult to overcome; and save or load your game at any given time just by tapping on the appropriate icon.

The graphics look pretty good as they have a stylised cel-shaded feel to them. The characters, surrounding environments and objects are all very bright and colourful with plenty of detail that collectively works extremely well and makes the world come alive right before your very eyes, which is further complemented by excellent animations for all of the characters.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great purely touch screen based user interface across various menus such as the main menu, options menu and various gameplay menus, although that means there is no support for navigation via the left analogue stick, right analogue stick, directional pad, face buttons and rear touch pad, which is a bit surprising considering they are mostly the usual method of navigating a game. The background of the main menu screen looks as though it consists of a piece of architecture that most probably ties in with the painting that is at the heart of the storyline.

The audio consists of voice-overs, sound effects and music, which really adds layers to the charm and humour of the game. The voice-overs offer up the standout area of audio with each character having a personality via exceptional performances from their respective voice-over artists. There is some returning voice-over talent from previous Broken Sword games and some new voice-over talent that form a very experienced cast with Rolf Saxon returning as lead voice-over artist for Broken Sword’s series protagonist George Stobbart. For instance, Rolf Saxon who has always voiced George Stobbart in every Broken Sword game since the original game in 1996 with plenty of experience in film and

television productions, such as the role of the CIA security analyst that has his drink laced with a substance that made his character quite ill in the build up to Tom Cruise’s vault scene, alongside roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies as a software programmer, Saving Private Ryan as Lieutenant Briggs, Entrapment as a director and the U.S. president in two episodes of the British comedy TV series Little Britain. Emma Tate who voices Nico Collard, Maria and a young Tiago Marques has a massive amount of experience in voice-overs having had roles in TV series including: Captain Scarlet, The Jungle Book, Angelina Ballerina and more besides, alongside roles in videogames, such as the Wallace and Gromit episodic games, Rogue Trooper, Shinobido and Dragon Age II, amongst others; while Terry Wilton who voices Father Simeone has narrated the Trine games, amongst various voice-over roles in other videogames. The sound effects breathe some life into the world as you will hear characters walking, interacting with objects and birds chirping, while the music is an appropriate classical soundtrack.

The trophy list includes twenty trophies with nineteen bronze trophies and one silver trophy. Broken Sword 5: Episode 1’s trophy list is essentially easy as all but three of the trophies are story related, therefore seventeen of the twenty trophies will be naturally earned as you progress through the storyline with the only difficulty coming from the three missable trophies that are relatively easy if you know what to do and when to do it. The story related trophies include the Oh my God it’s a Mirage bronze trophy for finding evidence of sabotage, while the missable trophies include the Notorious P.U.G bronze trophy for finding all of the hidden pugs in neighbour’s apartment; the Joey Easter Egg bronze trophy for finding all of the hidden Joeys; and the Hidden Goat Easter Egg bronze trophy for finding the hidden goat. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips to find the hidden objects for the three missable trophies that it would take anywhere from eight to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, but there are plenty of puzzles to solve, resulting in the difficulty level being the equivalent to how hard you find the puzzles to overcome. There will be a few puzzles that may potentially trip you up, but with some common logic and process of elimination; you will figure out any of the puzzles sooner, rather than later for the majority of the time as you progress through the story.

There are no online multiplayer features or online leaderboards. However, I can understand the exclusion of both online multiplayer and online leaderboards as the focus of the game is to solve the mystery that you are gradually untangling as you progress through the storyline. Online co-operative multiplayer may have possibly worked for two players to team up to figure out the puzzles as two heads are better than one sometimes, but the exclusion of online multiplayer features and online leaderboards do not detract from the experience as you would not anticipate either of them to appear in a point and click focused game in a genre that is usually solely single player, such as Broken Sword or anything of a similar genre for that matter.

The replayability of Broken Sword 5: Episode 1 stems from naturally wanting to play through the game again due to how much fun you will have exploring the possibilities of the humorous dialogue and overcoming all of the puzzles again. There are no online multiplayer features or online leaderboards, but what is there in the story will certainly have you coming back for a second playthrough as it is such an entertaining and fun experience.

Overall, the first episode of Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse does exactly what it promised to offer with an entertaining point and click adventure unlike any other with a cast of hilarious characters and plenty of intriguing intertwining puzzles to solve. I cannot wait to experience the second episode of Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse, which you can purchase in a bundle with the first episode for £15.99 and at that price for two full length games that possess such character and humour; you should add Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse to your absolute must buy list!

Jason Bonnar

10 out of 10

Analysis