Almost ten years ago when
the first point-and-click Broken Sword adventure game, Shadow
of the Templars (aka Circle of Blood) was
released, it wowed gamers with its quirky humor, beautiful 2D cartoon-style
artwork, a riveting storyline based on the treasure of the Knights
Templar, and an endearing cast of characters led by a globetrotting,
if somewhat nosy and naïve, hero in George Stobbart and his
trusty photo-journalist sidekick Nicole (Nico) Collard. A sequel,
The Smoking Mirror, was released just a year later and had George
and Nico on the trail of the dark ancient Mayan god Tezcatlipoca.
While somewhat disappointing due to its lack of depth and challenging
gameplay, it still had fans of the series
yearning for more.

Three years ago, the third
game in the series, The Sleeping Dragon, went the 3D route and
arrived amid a whirlpool of controversy, with
developer Charles Cecil proclaiming ‘The point and click adventure
game is dead, long live the adventure game!’. Fans of the series
feared the worst – would George Stobbart have to pick up a
pair of nanchucks and go postal on a bunch of malevolent hombres?
Thankfully, the ‘action’ elements were fairly watered
down, and the game was well received in the end. And now we have
Angel of Death, the fourth Broken
Sword game in what was originally
intended to be a trilogy (in the truly inspired fashion of any successful
franchise). Does this new game shine forth as a beacon of wholesome
adventure goodness or bring shame upon the legacy of its predecessors?
Read on to find out.

Angel
of Death picks up
the story a year after the events of the third game, with George
down on his luck, no longer a patent attorney,
and working at a cramped desk in a bail-bond agency to make ends
meet. Nico is nowhere to be found either, presumably having had enough
of George and his propensity for life-threatening excursions. Enter
Anna Maria, a gorgeous, easy-on-the-eye blonde who wants to recruit
George to decipher an ancient manuscript that might lead to an ancient
treasure. The moment she enters his office, the game fires up on
all cylinders and George finds himself frantically trying to escort
Anna to safety from a bunch of thugs who followed her and are threatening
to break down the door to his office to get to her. Once George manages
to escape from the office with Anna in tow, he embarks on another
globetrotting quest – first to retrieve the manuscript which
was stolen from her hotel safe, and then finally to locate the treasure.

In its essence, Angel
of Death is a 3D point-and-click adventure. The control scheme
employs the familiar point-and-click interface,
with the mouse pointer dynamically changing when over a ‘hotspot’ on
the screen, allowing you to perform actions such as looking, manipulating
objects or talking to a person. A left click selects the action to
perform on a hotspot, while a right click shows all the possible
actions that can be performed. The inventory is tucked away out of
sight, and appears when you roll your mouse to the top end of the
screen. A left click of the mouse moves George to anywhere on the
screen. You also have the option of using the direct control scheme
(a remnant from the previous installment in the series) and can move
George around using the keyboard. While the default movement mode
is ‘walk’, you will likely want to ‘run’,
and this is possible either with the mouse wheel or by keeping the
Control key on the keyboard pressed when you move.

The gorgeous 3D graphics
in Angel of Death are by far the show stealer. The character models
and environments have been updated since George’s
last outing, and are much more detailed than in The Sleeping
Dragon.
The lighting and shadow effects too are absolutely top notch. The
animation however is a mixed bag. I marveled at how George bent forward
when walking down stairs or swaggered like only a hero would, as
he walked. But then some inexcusable corner cutting made itself apparent – George
stood several feet away from a table while trying to open a drawer,
bent over slightly, curled his fingers, and voila, the drawer opened
magically. I noticed George’s magnetic abilities later again,
as far-away objects started magically jumping into the inventory
with a mere gesture of his hands.

I really liked the character
voiceovers in Angel of Death, which I thought were masterfully
done. Rolfe Saxon lends his voice to George
Stobbart for the fourth time, adding a much needed consistency and
continuity that fans of the series will appreciate. Other voiceovers,
including those having Scottish, Italian, Turkish or French accents
are done very professionally and help make the characters feel more
believable. The voiced-over dialogues certainly live up to the strong
writing that has been a hallmark of this series. George’s monologues
and conversations in general never get wearisome, and are interspersed
with some amusing banter that made me chuckle on more than one occasion.
The background music too is composed with the typical flair that
is a characteristic of the Broken Sword games. It is subtle and enjoyable,
chipping into a scene at just the right time and generally well suited
to the backdrop.

Speaking of backdrops, one of the strengths of the Broken
Sword series has been its colorful, meticulously detailed, diverse and
well populated locations spanning all across the globe. In keeping
with tradition, Angel of Death takes you through such locales as
New York, Phoenix, Vatican City, Rome and Istanbul. But this time
around the locales look quite dull and lifeless. There is not much
freedom to explore most of the locations, and oftentimes there are
very few people to interact with. I would have expected to meet more
than just a bum and a priest on a visit to Rome! And in your hotel
in Istanbul, a receptionist and a waiter will be your only companions.

For the most part, the
pacing of the story is just right. There will be times when you
can almost feel the urgency, as you hunt for
clues to try and escape from prison before your execution, or when
you try to get Anna to safety, as she hides in the fire escape, urging
you to hurry up and rescue her before the goons find her. Thankfully,
these situations are just meant to get your adrenaline flowing, and
it doesn’t matter how long you take to figure out what to do
next. But lest I give you any semblance of false hope, let me reveal
that there actually are some dastardly timed puzzles that end up
being quite annoying.

The
puzzles in Angel of Death are for the most part varied and quite
challenging. There
are the usual inventory based ones that require
you to pick up items, combine them and use them at the appropriate
locations on the screen. Then there are some that require you to
manipulate the environment, such as *drumroll* crate shifting puzzles,
that are practically a trademark of the series. At a point in the
game, when George enters a room full of crates, I could just imagine
fans of the series letting out a collective ‘Oh #%$@!’. Thankfully,
you won’t have to shift all of them – in fact crate puzzles
are only used sparingly in Angel of Death.

One recurring puzzle throughout
the game will involve a mini-game on your PDA, which if solved
correctly will allow you to hack through
various networks and gain access to useful data. While the mini-game
started out as being fun for the first few times, it quickly became
fiendishly hard towards the end of the game. Some of the other harder
puzzles will require you to perform an action at the right time or
in the right sequence. This can be frustrating, especially since
a lot of these type of puzzles aren’t all that well clued in.
The game can be quite unforgiving at times, and you will often find
yourself stranded without a clue about what to do next. In this,
Angel of Death reminded me of the old school adventure games of yore
that, come to think of it, aggravated me in my younger days as well.

There are also some stealth
sequences, such as when George must sneak past watchful monks or
dodge security laser beams as they blink
on and off, to reach the other end of a museum. If you aren’t
careful, you can even die. And you probably will, for there are several
situations where you will have no recourse but trial and error, before
you chance upon the right way to proceed. The game is quite forgiving
however in this area, and if you happen to die, it will place you
right back to a time just before you made your faux pas. This is
a game that requires a lot of patience and lateral thinking, be it
searching for hard-to-find clues to progress or solving some of the
infuriatingly difficult puzzles. Even experienced adventure gamers
will be faced with moments when they’ll be itching to consult
a walkthrough.

As the story progresses,
George will realize that things are not what they seem. There are
plenty of twists and turns throughout the
game that will keep you guessing. One twist in particular, midway
through the game, will completely change the nature of the quest,
turning the game head over heels. Several old friends from the earlier
games in the series will make an appearance to help you in your quest,
which will please fans of the series no end. And you will also get
to play as other characters besides George, but I won’t spoil
the surprises in store for you. While I have to admit that the overall
storyline didn’t feel all that original, the way that it gradually
unfolded kept me anxiously scrounging for any tidbits of information
I could find to make sense of what was going on.

There were a few things about Angel
of Death that annoyed me. The
controls for instance were a bit hard to work with at times. I used
the mouse for moving around, but had to use the keyboard to run,
since my mouse wheel would not do the job. Clicking on a particular
spot on the screen also did not guarantee that my character would
walk there. Multiple clicks around the intended destination would
eventually solve the problem, but it was frustrating nonetheless.
And you will probably need a hefty system with a pretty good graphics
card if you intend to enjoy Angel of Death with all its special effects
turned on. Otherwise be prepared to play on the low graphics detail
mode, and tolerate some woefully low frame rates.

There were other points
where the game stuttered, for instance times when clicking on the
occasional hotspot produced no response whatsoever.
The hotspots themselves oftentimes tended to be easy to miss, because
they were only a few pixels wide. I also encountered at least one
bug (near a garbage dump at the meat packing factory) that prevented
me from progressing further in the game, and required me to reload
a previous saved game. But the game was quite stable otherwise, and
it wasn’t too hard to work around the bug. A final, minor grievance
I had was with the inability to skip dialogues. If you accidentally
started a conversation with someone on a topic you had already covered
earlier, you’d have to sit through the back and forth banter
all over again.

Conclusion

Angel
of Death is not
a perfect game. It suffers from patchy controls, dull and unremarkable
locales and an ending that is a bit of a let
down. But it also has some gorgeous 3D graphics, top notch voiceovers,
music and dialogue, and an ultimately engrossing storyline which
is well paced and will keep your interest piqued. Overall, I found
it a pretty enjoyable experience. Fans of the series should definitely
not miss out. If you’ve never played a Broken Sword game before,
I’d recommend playing one of the earlier ones and then giving
Angel of Death a spin.

System Requirements:

Minimum:

• Windows(R) XP
• DirectX 9.0c (included)
• Pentium 4 1.4GHz
• 256 MB RAM
• 2.6 GB free hard drive
  space
• 2x DVD-ROM Drive
• 128 MB Shader model
  1.1 compatible video card*
• Windows compatible
  sound card*
• Keyboard, Mouse

Recommended:

• Windows(R) XP
• DirectX 9.0c (included)
• Pentium 4 1.4GHz or
  better
• 512 MB RAM
• 2.6 GB free hard drive
  space
• 2x DVD-ROM Drive or
  better
• 128 MB Shader model
  1.1 compatible video card or better*
• Windows compatible
  sound card*
• Keyboard, Mouse

*indicates that device must be compatible with DirectX 9.0c.