The characters can be disarming as well as witty at times, and demonstrate a dry sense of humour that fails some of the more annoying of us. Nico and George provide narration through the game, and their asides make the story a lot more personal and involving to follow. Two other murders have been committed around the world by a snowman and a giant Emperor penguin, and this, of course, is related to the shadowy templar-y organization with a long history of skulking in the shadows and doing what Templars seem to do George Best. A sinister clown (surely malevolence is down on the person specification for those in the children’s party industry?) serves up an alfresco explosion at the restaurant where George Stobbart happens to be dining, bringing Stobbart into the mystery and continuing to serve his addiction. Broken Sword’s sleuthsome twosome start the game hunting the Costume Killer, an international assassin disguised as a mime who was somehow platonically involved with Nico’s father. Ignoring the Machiavellian machinations of the Knights Templar for a moment, Nico’s unusual past possibly goes some way to solving the riddle of her hair, which challenges the Human League’s Phil Oakey for tonsorial inexplicability. The DS remix tacks on introductory sections with the sufficiently Francosteinish Nico Collard, journalist for La Liberté, former convent schoolgirl, and potato-loving art student crusading for justice and the truth about her papa. The original version of Broken Sword gave the world the opportunity to play only as George Stobbart, American tourist and amateur mysteriologist with an MPhil in Nosey Parker Studies. Right from the start there’s a warm, fuzzy genre comfort blanket draped around the story. Indy is name checked, one of the game’s locations is an archaeological dig, and at one point a character quotes “that belongs in a museum”. Indiana Jones is another strong influence, but with fewer Nazis and implications of light bondage. Although Broken Sword antecedes Dan Brown and the Albino of Self-Flagellation, plot similarities are as inescapable as your own eventual mortality. Set in urban Paris, it’s an adventurous adventure game for not being set in either space, space in the future, or the mystical realms of Whatevzonia. Within the first few scenes you’re already in a café.
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