Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse

Not broken at all

Broken Sword is a classic old school point and click adventure game, and as such will please fans of the genre and Broken Sword fans in particular. Its style harkens back to the first and second game in the series with great 2D art and smooth animations. While Nico's voice has been replaced, Rolf Saxon is reprising his role as George Stobbart and doing a splendid job of it. It's like 1996 never left us which is nothing but a compliment.

Episode 1 sets up an interesting story, specially if you're a fan of murder mysteries. There's a host of fun characters to meet and most of them are slightly overplayed. This is nothing new to the Broken Sword universe, it's actually part of the charm. The puzzles will for the most part not make a huge intellectual dent, but they suffice. If you're able to ignore the slightly racist puzzle mid-way through the episode, you're going to have a pretty good time.

For veteran adventure game players, Broken Sword might come off as too hand-heldy. In the cases where it doesn't tell you where to go, it actually just takes you there. This is not a huge deal, but a part of the whole genre is to either make sense of things and figure it out yourself, or revel in the sheer absurdity and hope for the best - including finding the next location.

It's an episodic game divided into two episodes. So far only episode 1 is out and it's really, really short, and the wait for the next one is really, really long. Not an awesome combination.