Review: Broken Sword: The Angel of Death

Unwitting hero George Stobbart investigates yet more dark secrets

The hero of the Broken Sword series of games, George Stobbart, first appeared on our screens way back in 1996 as a befuddled tourist thrust into a mystery caper.

Now he’s back in the latest Broken Sword title – Angel of Death. The background to the game is that George now works in the bail bonds industry. It’s not, perhaps, the most exciting of jobs, but the action doesn’t take long to get going when a mystery blonde woman appears at his door. She’s swiftly followed by three goons, and the chase is on.

Unlike some of the more modern adventure-shooter games we’ve seen, Broken Sword sticks firmly to the old-fashioned point-and-click method of interaction. You never get to control George directly, just direct him on the screen and tell him to pick up or use objects on the way. The controls are very simple and it doesn’t take long to get to grips with the game – you’re basically left to use mouse clicks.

The graphics are reasonably good while the voiceovers add plenty of spice to the game by being both realistic and fun. However we did find, on occasion, that some of the humour was dated.
Despite the plot being absolute nonsense, it’s strangely engaging. The various puzzles you’ll encounter during the game are mostly interesting, as is the overall gameplay.

That said, during testing we encountered some severe problems involving the mouse pointer moving excruciatingly slowly. Worse still, this was experienced on our fast test PC running Windows Vista and with the game set to the lowest available settings.

Despite these problems, at the bargain price of just £10, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death is an engaging, old-style adventure title that will appeal to a wide variety of gamers.