Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse (PC, 2014)

The Broken Sword series has always been the gold standard of European adventure games.  The first and most beloved game in the series, released in 1996, is one of the last great 2D adventure games from the classic era, and still looks quite beautiful.  This series, from the British studio Revolution, stars an American George Stobbart, and a French journalist Nico Collard, who get caught up in one occult conspiracy after another.

Though the developers reached their peak with the first game, there is a strong international fan base, even after the developers left their beautiful 2D artwork behind and moved to lackluster 3D in the third and fourth games.  Although the third game deserves kudos for keeping the spirit of adventure games alive in the dry spell of the early 2000s, neither of these games are particularly great.  Fans of crate-pushing puzzles may disagree.

So many fans were understandably excited when Revolution promised a return to the glory days in the Kickstarter-funded fifth game.

Not only is the game in glorious 2D.  The puzzles are even refreshingly hard, after a spell of much-too-easy modern adventure games (here I'm thinking especially of Jane Jensen's Moebius, of which I should have much to say later).  There are some decent cryptographic puzzles, but most of them are in the classic inventory-style.  Some of the former are quite tricky - and just as silly as the infamous cat-hair moustache of Gabriel Knight III.  But Clare and I never really got stuck, mostly because the interface is dirt simple.  Hotspots are easy to find, and the game doesn't make you choose between different ways of interacting with an object.  Also, the game very rarely forces you to leave a room to search for a necessary item.

The story centers around a stolen Gnostic painting, which leads George and Nico around Europe in search of a tablet that does...something.  Actually, the plot doesn't really pick up until the second half of the game, and even then it's not that engaging.  The writing was never at the level of Gabriel Knight - it's mostly popcorn Indiana Jones-style stuff.  Clare and I played through all of the previous games with gusto, and even we couldn't recognize most of the recurring characters.

Actually the character design is the game's biggest problem.  The supporting characters are cartoonishly one-dimensional, and the poor voice acting doesn't help the situation.  (That's something I don't miss about the 90's.)  However, even George and Nico didn't seem to have any internal motivation.  They just seemed cheerily optimistic, like they were just grateful for their Kickstarter-funded revival.  In a shamelessly crowd-pleasing move, the writers even tried to force a romantic connection at the end of the game, without acknowledging any of their history.  Ugh.

Ultimately, this game was something of a disappointment.  Although modern adventure games should take note that it's possible to do hard puzzles reasonably well, there's really no excuse for mediocre writing.