Those from North America will recognise this classic point-and-click puzzle/adventure game as Circle of Blood. It follows young Californian Lawyer George Stobbart with enormous pockets around Europe and Asia searching for the lost secrets of the Templars after he witnesses a terrorist bombing in Paris by a man in a clown costume.
The story is fantastic and really does play out like a movie - actually I do remember going to see the Da Vinci Code on release and had several Broken Sword double-takes. A young American fascinated by the history of the Templars teams up with a hot French girl and they go to uncover its secrets... Inspiration or not, Broken Sword worked well as a game story-wise and was engaging and interesting throughout.
There is one horrible plague on this game though, several fatal errors you can make if you don't play it right. There are HUGE glitches present throughout that can literally make your save useless if you do it incorrectly. According to the credits, some of the game testing was done by family members of Charles Cecil, the creator of the game, and that may explain it. For example, if you go to Spain before completing the objectives to go to Syria, a character won't be present when you return to do an important task and you get stuck in Parisian limbo unless you restart or reload a save before you go to Spain. It's a really glaring fatal flaw and I fell into it the first time I played.
So if you know your way around the game or know where the traps are and how to avoid them, this game offers many hours of play, brilliant humour, polished voice talent and rich environments. George Stobbart remains one of my favourite protagonists of a video game: he's sarcastic, intelligent and his humour is delightfully droll. It's available on many different formats so if you like adventure games or puzzle games, give it a shot.
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