Few
adventure games arrive with a better pedigree than Revolution’s
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon. It’s the third in
a venerated series that began in 1996 with Broken
Sword: Shadow of the Templars. Templars was a beautifully
hand-animated 2D mystery-adventure, and its storytelling, entertaining
puzzles, good humor and great good looks made it a legendary game.
In fact, in the spirit of full disclosure I should say from the outset
that the first Broken Sword is my favorite adventure game of all time.

The second game in the
series, The
Smoking Mirror, was perhaps not quite the classic game the
first one was, but it was nevertheless well-received.

This third game, The
Sleeping Dragon has been controversial from its inception, largely
because of the outspoken comments of Revolution’s game guru
Charles Cecil.

Since the controversy is
such a proverbial elephant in the corner of the room, I’m not
going to ignore it.

The
Elephant

Charles
Cecil has a big problem: The guy’s always thinking.

He loves computer games
and he especially loves adventure games. Like everyone else, he watched
the decline of the prominence of traditional point-and-click graphical
adventures in the last five years. All the while he’s been thinking,
“How will adventure games keep up? How should they change with
the new technology and new gaming trends?”

Cecil’s first foray
into the brave new world of contemporary adventure games was In
Cold Blood, released in 2000. And while I was fairly critical
of that game, the fact is, Cecil and his team were reaching for a
new way to present computer game adventures. The game had a slick,
cinematic feel, plenty of exciting moments, and fun puzzle-solving.
It was largely ignored by adventure game players because (I believe)
it was improperly perceived as an action-adventure game. It was, in
fact, a pure adventure title.

Later, everyone in the
adventure community was thrilled to hear the news that there would
be a third Broken Sword game. Unfortunately for his PR, Cecil
had no intention of making the third game in the same 2D format as
its forbears.

Many
players wondered if Revolution would suffer the same difficulties
as Jane Jensen did with her brilliant, but much maligned 3D effort
Gabriel Knight:
Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned.

Even worse, Cecil had the
unmitigated gall several months ago to say in an interview that “point
and click is dead.” For that unpardonable sin, he was burned
in effigy from one end of the internet to the other.

As early descriptions of
the third Broken Sword game made their way onto the World Wide Web,
some gamers rashly declared the upcoming game to be merely another
action/adventure, and turned their backs on it. “Broken Game!”
declared one particularly rash member of the cyber-lynch mob.

Their loss.

The
Proof of the Pudding is in the Playing

So at last, here we have
it. The third Broken Sword game. Maverick adventure game
designer Charles Cecil finally has to put his money where his mouth
is.

So what the heck IS Broken
Sword: The Sleeping Dragon? Is it an action/adventure? A platformer?
Is it a disaster?

The answer is: The
Sleeping Dragon is a pure adventure game that takes place in
a 3D world. And it’s easily the best adventure game since Syberia.

George
and Nico Revolutions

Time
has been good to both George and Nico, the intrepid heroes of the
first two games. Nico is as lovely as ever, and has a pretty good
job at a Parisian newspaper. George has been working as a patent attorney
in Idaho, and has grown a bit handsomer and more athletic since he
last saved the world.

The story begins as George
is flying to a remote location in the Congo to meet with a scientist
about some patent work. The woefully inadequate plane he’s in
crashes, and the adventure is afoot.

The big fat change is,
of course, the fact that this game takes place in a 3D environment.
Characters are moved using the arrow keys, and there are a cluster
of four “action” keys mapped to the WASD buttons (but
are fully customizable). This control scheme takes about five minutes
to get used to and works very well.

The inventory and conversation
systems are extremely similar to the first two games. Inventory is
brought up at the tap of the spacebar button, and inventory items
can easily be used on the environment or combined with each other.
Conversation topics are noted by colorful icons.

The clincher to making
this entire system work well is the use of an “active hotspot”
feature. As George or Nico move through the environment, a bright
little spark appears at any possible point of interaction. Also, the
character’s head will turn toward that object (reminiscent of
Grim
Fandango or the fourth Monkey
Island game). You can easily switch a character’s attention
between hotspots with the flick of a button.

Globetrotting
and Puzzle Solving

Cecil and his team have
done a wonderful job of bringing the feeling of a Broken Sword
game into this new 3D environment. The handy third dimension actually
opens up many possibilities for puzzles that would have been difficult
or impossible in a 2D game. Many of the puzzles have to do with using
and manipulating objects to gain access. So there’s rock climbing,
rail hanging, ledge crawling, etc. Let me emphasize that at no time
does this kind of puzzle make the game feel like an action/adventure
or even a platformer. The controls are very tight and specific –
it’s about choosing the “climb up” or “climb
down” action icon, not about running and jumping a la Tomb
Raider.

The
camera is fixed at all times and usually works very well. In fact,
the camera placement and movement often gives the game a wonderfully
cinematic feel.

Nico and George begin the
game separately, and the story dovetails their separate toward each
other beautifully. Once they do hook up, some sections of the game
are played with them together and cooperating in the puzzle solving
(“Hey, Nico, press this button while I stand on this block!”)
and other sections are played with each character separately.

As in the previous games,
George seems to have an endless budget for plane tickets. The story
bounces from the Congo to England to Paris to Prague and even to that
classic mainstay of the adventure game, Egypt.

I am sympathetic to the
plight of the game designer’s dilemma of finding new ways to
present puzzles in games. Like jokes and murder motives, it sometimes
seems like there’s only so many different puzzles in the world,
and the challenge is to recycle them creatively. I’m going to
single out one particular puzzle in The Sleeping Dragon that
does this particularly well. There’s an old puzzle that involves
moving different pieces from one side of a board to the other, with
strict rules about which pieces can ever be left alone together. Late
in the game there’s a puzzle that uses this old chestnut, but
in such a beautiful and visually elegant manner that it was a true
pleasure to revisit.

The
Sleeping Dragon’s Lair

The
world of Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is a dangerous
place, and you’ll die often. Happily, the game is extremely
forgiving, not requiring any reloading of a saved game. The game just
restarts right before where you made your fatal error.

Many of these deaths require
a quick pressing of an action button to save the day. Adventure purists
might be annoyed at these “timed puzzles” but trust me,
they’re dead easy. It’s mostly a matter of pressing the
only possible button as it flashes on the screen.

These sequences are curiously
reminiscent of the old animated arcade game Dragon’s Lair,
as a bit of quick timing is required to move the movie forward properly.
Let me re-emphasize, however, that these sequences are fun, not onerous.

There’s also a surprising
amount of stealth involved in the game, and it’s very nice to
see this element used well in an adventure game. Both George and Nico
have the ability to “creep” and hide in the shadows, which
is often necessary to avoid the nasty guards.

The
Good

The graphics in The
Sleeping Dragon are beautiful and reminiscent of the warmth and
detail found in the first two games. In fact, there’s a sequence
in which a major location of the first game is revisited, and it’s
quite fun to see it in its new 3D glory.

The storytelling is easily
on par with the first two games. The story is dramatic, funny, scary
and intriguing, and is full of entertaining characters.

The musical score by Ben
McCullough is superb: dramatic, moody and atmospheric.

The
voice acting is superb throughout. What a relief! Bad voice acting
in games is such a pet peeve of mine, and it’s good to see it
taken seriously here.

Rolf Saxon returns as George
Stobbart, and his performance is totally in-synch with the characters
slightly more grown-up persona. Sarah Crooke (an intern at Revolution
who convinced Cecil to let her audition) is terrific making her “Nico”
debut.

The
Bad

I can only picture the
crankiest of adventure players having a serious problem with the control
scheme in the game. True, there’s no mouse support, which to
some players is heresy. But the controls are easy to pick up and work
very well. Give it five minutes and you’ll barely be thinking
about the controls.

However, for those players
who own an XBox, I would recommend playing this game on that platform,
as the controls would be even easier. Moving the characters around
with the analog stick would be much preferable to the arrow keys on
the PC.

Also, I wish the player
had control of the camera. While the fixed camera angles are usually
solid, since this game involves a lot of stealth, there are times
when you wish you could use the camera to get a better look around
at your surroundings.

The
Ugly

Only
two things make the ugly list.

First, although the “move
crates around” puzzles are intuitive and fun, there are entirely
too many of them. It smacks of serious puzzle fatigue that the
designers included this many of essentially the same kind of puzzle.

Finally, there’s
one vital hotspot (a rope on an upper level of some scaffolding) that
is extremely easy to miss, and without which the game comes to a grinding
halt. HINT: Keep your eyes peeled around the pissoir!

Conclusion

Broken Sword: The Sleeping
Dragon is a triumph. It’s at the same time a real 3D game
and a crackerjack pure adventure. High levels of craftsmanship and
designer TLC are evident throughout the game. Playing it is like falling
into an exciting movie thriller. This game is recommended for anyone,
and for adventure lovers it’s absolutely not to be missed.

Final Grade: A+

Visit the official Broken:
Sword Sleeping Dragon website
for numerous goodies including game trailers.

System Requirements:

• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• Pentium III 750 MHz
  (Pentium III 1.2 GHz Recommended)
• 128MB RAM
• 8x CD-ROM Drive
• DirectX 8.1
• Sound Card (Sound Card
  with 5.1 Surround Sound Support Recommended)
• GeForce2 64 MB or Equivalent
  (GeForce4 Ti 4200 or Equivalent
  Recommended)
• 1 GB Hard Disk space
• Keyboard and Mouse /Gamepad
• Speakers

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.