Broken Sword
                  Available at about œ9.95

                 Reviewed by Julian Gregory

In this game you play the part of an American holidaying in Paris
and it starts as you are sitting outside a Parisian cafe when a
bomb explodes inside. When you come round you are interrogated by
the police and then meet up with a female news journalist.

You, of course, decide you need to investigate why the cafe was
blown up and the only occupant killed.

The game is the now traditional type in which you point the mouse
cursor at an object to see if it changes and you then know whe-
ther or not you need to do anything with it.

The game is divided into various sections and will involve you
flying to several locations around the world. These locations will
only become available as you solve certain puzzles. Each section
contains only about 6 or 7 locations. The pictures are very well
depicted, but the lack of locations is a problem. Particularly in
the beginning you only have a certain number of options available,
so solving puzzles seemed to me to be fairly easy. There were only
3 or 4 places where I really needed to stop and think what to do
next.

Having said that the problems are well constructed. I particularly
liked the rather stupid French gendarme. Some of his comments
almost made me laugh out loud.

Another nice feature is that you can choose to have the text
onscreen, or just listen to it. I found that I needed to have
both, otherwise it is easy to miss certain phrases or words.

The game appears to be quite flexible in that you can visit each
location as often as you like, until you have finished that
section.  However, in order to progress the game is quite linear
in that you can only get to certain other locations when
everything required up to that point has be done.

In conclusion, this was well worth the money, particularly now
that it has been released as a budget game by Sold Out.
















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