George Stobbart, a young American, is on holiday and touring Europe. He's sitting outside a cafe in Paris and hasn't a care in the world. Little did he know, that the next 5 five minutes would change his life. A pretty waitress is bringing his coffee and as he returns her smile a middle-aged man enters the cafe. The waitress shows the man in and George is irritated that the waitress has walked away. A clown enters the cafe with a musical instrument. ten seconds later he runs out and away of the cafe. Then a big explosion destroys the cafe and George barely survives. Then middle-aged man is however dead. Feeling sorry for the man he start to investigating the surroundings. Having some success with finding evidence and having met a pretty French reporter investigating the bombing, he decides to investigate it further.... George Stobbart gets to know more about bombing than he probably cared to know. A group of people are determined to take over the world and George's success at investigating the bombing does not make them happy.. At the end he alone is the only one who can stop them finding a weapon so strong it will help the group of "NeoTemplars" as they are called, to rule the world. George will travel to many different locations such as Ireland, Spain, Scotland and Syria to try and stop these foes.

Again we have bumped into an adventure with an amazingly rich storyline. The best way to describe the story is James Bond meets Indiana Jones. It contain the main elements of these two famous stories. The James Bond part in the story is that George Stobbart will get himself in trouble and uses James Bond kind of methods to get out of a few scrapes. At one point he is up a mountain with no way out and a man with a gun is trying to kill him. I will not spoil for you how he gets out of this nasty situation, but the method could come from a James Bond movie. Further George will find himself on top on a train trying to get a guarded part of the train. Also this scene could come straight from a James Bond movie. The Indiana Jones part of the story is obvious, the locations for example, George will go underground into sewers, travel to exotic locations, searches for clues in caves. Typical Indiana jones. But the most important link to Indiana Jones is what the game is all about. A broken sword with magical power, A group of descendants of the Templars trying to find it. It is very likely to be an Indiana Jones story, which always contains magical stuff such as The Holy Grail. I'm not trying to point out that the game is crap because of this, but that it is great because of this. The combination seems to bring a new type of story. It is full of unexpected twists and enemies turn out to be friend and friends enemies. I have rarely experienced this with other adventure-games. Further more the story is full of historic facts, which makes it almost a real life kindof thing. A fantastic storyline.

The graphics of the game, as mentioned already above, are awesome. Nice detailed backgrounds and amazingly animated characters seem to fill the screen every time. Never before 1996 have I seen such great graphics. Especially the movements of the characters are really smooth. Revolution must have put a high priority on character animations. A simple action as walking up the stairs is animated fantastic. His whole body his moving. When George's bends down to pick something up his movements are smooth and lifelike. fantastic. All the characters have richly detailed faces and bodies and I think that even in 1998 these graphics could pass for pretty good. A few backgrounds are superbly done aswell. I can remember one in Spain showing a garden with small rainbow that is wonderfully drawn almost a photograph. The game contains also a few animated cutscenes, which are beautiful. I just wish there would have been more. Only one cut-scene shows pixels in a lower resolution, but this is because "the camera" moves heavily.

The music of the game is composed by Barrington Pheloung a famous British composer. His music contains some pretty tunes which are a nice setting for the environment. But for a James Bond/Indiana Jones kind of story I would have expected also some more tension-building music. Some more drums, for example. When George gets in trouble I want to hear music which gives a dangerous feel to the situation. Or when when George is fighting for his life, I want to hear fast music. Know what I mean? The music is too nice most of the times. It sound nice and calming when George is investigating, but they should have changed it more depending on the situation George is in. However the introduction theme is nice and sound like a real soundtrack. The ending theme is nice too.

The sound effects are very good and they of course have to be with such a game. The explosion in the intro is very good. The voice-overs are good, though some are a bit dodgy, but generally well done. Fortunately most Cd-rom adventures come with good sound-effects, since the Cd-rom provides enough space for it.

All in all a great game. I heard some complaints about having to talk too much, although this is true I didn't have a problem with it. I think it only contributes to the storyline in this case. There are also a few story unrelated puzzles, but most of them are quite logic (for beginners perhaps hard) and not too easy. I can recommend this game to any adventuregame-fan who like Indiana Jones or James Bond. The game is quite long and offers at least 40 hours of adventure fun.

The original game is not for sale anymore, but is recently released in a White Label box. This means, as we all know, a low price-tag. I believe it is for sale for about �10. If you don't own the game, here's your chance. You can get it at Virgin or at you local retailer. The sequel Broken Sword: The Smoking mirror is still for sale at both Virgin and Revolution Software.
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