Broken Sword IV: The Angel Of Death Review (PC)

Will this instalment spell death for the series? Or is there enough innocent blood on the doorposts for it to be spared?

I think that one of the biggest disbeliefs that the player has to suspend when playing through Revolution Software’s adventure gaming tour-de-force, is quite how a patent lawyer from California can have such continued bad luck. I am speaking of course of the ‘Broken Sword’ series, and the wisecracking, world-saving hero George Stobbart, and while George may be the least fortunate man ever to walk the planet, in a slightly ironic way this is something we should really be glad about. The reason I say this, is that George’s misfortune allows Revolution to do what they do best; delivering top-notch adventure games with captivating stories that are considered some of the best in the field. ‘The Angel of Death’, or for U.S. readers ‘Secrets Of The Ark’, is the fourth game in the series, and sees our hero forced into working for a backwater bail-bonds firm after he loses his job as a patent lawyer, and is unable to get another following the events of the previous game. Obviously the simple life can’t last long for George, and his dull monotony is broken at the beginning of the game, when a mysterious and beautiful woman walks into his office, with a proposition of cracking a medieval manuscript that points to an even more ancient treasure, and saving her from Mafioso killers. This propels George on yet another unintended and international adventure, and he soon finds himself on another quest to save the world. Revolution have obviously recognised and attempted to rectify some of the problems present in the interface used in ‘The Sleeping Dragon’, and as such this game will feel a lot more familiar to players the first two games in the series, as well as players of older adventure games in general. The game integrates a ‘point & click’ interface with a three dimensional world, and also goes back to the more traditional (for the series) inventory bar, which seems to work much better with this style of game. While I appreciate the improvements that Revolution have made in The Angel Of Death, it’s far from a technical masterpiece, and still feels a little clunky in operation, but admittedly less so than the previous game.

While not an amazing game, The Angel Of Death still stands above the crowd, and has its moments of brilliance.

I feel somewhat obliged to mention at this point that one of the reasons this review has taken so long, was that I actually wasn’t able to play this game on a modern PC, which is a major problem, given that the game is available for PC only. My problem was that after about 5 minutes of gameplay, all of the voices would completely cut out, and despite my best efforts, and following the various instructions provided by Revolution, as well as unofficial sources, I could not rectify this. Eventually, I managed to get the game running on my mac (using a wrapper downloaded from www.paulthetall.com – if you’re a mac gamer, check out his site, it contains some brilliant stuff!) and it ran mostly problem free, excluding a couple of random crashes. Despite the fact that I eventually got the game working, it does disappoint me that Revolution failed to future-proof even their most recent original game, and that some players simply won’t be able to actually play the game because of this. Discounting the technical hitches, the game is actually full of strong points, and I found it genuinely challenging and enjoyable to play, despite having completed it in the past. The music and sound effects are as brilliant as ever, the graphics have taken a big step up from The Sleeping Dragon, and the puzzles are some of the most inventive, and definitely some of the most taxing in the series, which I definitely appreciated, even if I did have to resort to using a walkthrough on a few occasions. The characters are all well voiced, expertly animated, and actually have enough individuality & personality to feel like real people, which was definitely a plus point over some of the previous games, and gave enough grounding for the story to be a little more believable, although I would consider it the weakest of the series in this department. The game makes good use of humour, but overall is soured slightly by some fairly cringe worthy moments (was an implied sex scene really necessary?) and an extremely abrupt and anticlimactic ending, which definitely could’ve been done better. Thankfully, with the likely announcement of the fifth instalment on the horizon, it seems Revolution have decided that there’s still life in the series, and I’d be inclined to agree with them. While not an amazing game, The Angel Of Death still stands above the crowd, and has its moments of brilliance. It is challenging, fun to play, and introduces some great new characters to the series, rather than constantly relying on recycled ones to progress the story. All in all, despite the technical flaws, The Angel Of Death is a worthy addition to the series, and has left room for what will hopefully be a breath-taking conclusion to the series!