Broken Sword: The Angel of Death: When a Trilogy Has Four Parts, You Know It Must Be Good Company: THQ Broken Sword: The Angel of Death is scheduled for release some time in September 2006. The demo was released at the end of August, so I took the opportunity to check out the new installment of this fine adventure game series. The Angel of Death is a point and click 3-D adventure; based on the demo, it does not appear that The Angel of Death has any action sequences at all. It’s classic adventure all the way. If the demo is any indication, this fourth episode of the Broken Sword series promises to be every bit as entertaining as its predecessors and may very well top Charles Cecil’s already very high record of excellent adventure games. I for one am sold and will pick up this title the moment it is released. As demos go, this one for The Angel of Death is just adequate. Publisher THQ provides about 20-30 minutes of game play in this preview, which is barely enough time to establish the learning curve and understand the mechanical logic of the game. For instance, the player's avatar, George Stobbart, must look through a window at the activities of some NPCs. For that action, the cursor appears as an eye. Later, George must put something in that same window; for that action, the cursor remains an eye. Usually in adventure games, the cursor changes when different actions are required; here, the cursor does not change to indicate a shift in required action. The mechanics here may be a bug in the demo, or it may indeed be the logic of the game; I was not given enough time to determine either. Further, there are some actions George must perform where there is no indicative cursor at all; you merely point the nondescript arrow at a spot and George performs the action. There is nothing at all wrong with cursors not giving away clues to required actions; however, it seems, at least based on my experience with the demo for The Angel of Death, that there may be some potentially troubling inconsistencies in the cursor indicators. And, because this demo is so short, I was able only to experience a very narrow band of the storyline, which is delivered in the demo through fairly uninspiring text prior to the start of gameplay. It seems that Nico Collard of The Sleeping Dragon does not figure prominently in The Angel of Death, and is apparently being replaced by another female interest in George's world named Anna Maria. There is a giant conspiracy in The Angel of Death, and while the demo does very little to illustrate this story, I am nonetheless completely intrigued by its prospect. One can get more information about the storyline from THQ's website for the game. The demo consists of a portion of the game play sequence at Martino’s Meat Packing Company. George must find his way into the meat factory, locate his client Anna Maria’s stolen manuscript, then distract the Mafiosi and sneak his way deep into their inner sanctum and retrieve the manuscript. At the beginning of the Martino’s sequence, George has quite a long and, I must say, somewhat tedious conversation with Carlos, the deli clerk. Because the demo does not have a save option, I had to lose progress in order to attend to interruptions like work, sleep, and dinner. So, I heard the Carlos sequence quite a few times. However, while this conversation is somewhat tedious, the voice acting is nonetheless very good; Carlos sounds like an authentic bag man—a made guy perhaps, but not a terribly important branch in the “family” tree. There is only one other NPC in this game play sequence, and he too sounds and looks like an authentic Mafia figure. To that degree, some of the jokes and images, while not Sopranos in content, are nonetheless somewhat macabre and perhaps not appropriate for very young players. Put "Mafia" with "meat-packing company" together in your imagination and you get the idea. In Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, the third game in the series, there were several sequences that were not exactly action, but not exactly adventure, either. For instance, in that game George must get out of a crashed airplane under certain pressing circumstances; this sequence resembles Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend more than it does, say, The Longest Journey. However, it seems Charles Cecil, the series' creator, has left out these more pressing situations in The Angel of Death in favor of a more classic, traditional point and click experience. In the same tradition, the in-game camera is game-controlled – the player never controls the view point. Instead, the game automatically tracks to the view that the player needs to continue game play. Personally, I prefer in-game camera control with 360-degree panning because it feels less restrictive; nonetheless, in-game camera control comes with its own set of problems (think Lara Croft up against a wall in Legend), and The Angel of Death studiously and mercifully avoids such distractions. The Broken Sword series is beloved by adventure gamers, and for very good reason. The storyline and the character development are intense and vibrant, and the game play and puzzles are meaningful, immersive, and fun (if at times, a little difficult). Few corners are cut in key areas such as character design (George really is a beautiful and captivating man), lighting, textures, voices, sound, and soundtrack. Broken Sword: The Angel of Death, in spite of some minor mechanical issues and something of a lackluster demo, promises to be a rich, dense adventure experience and a must-play for any adventure gamer. Look for it any time now. -Doc Holliday, GameVortex Communications AKA Valerie Holliday Related Links: THQ's Website Broken Sword: The Angel of Death Official Website