NEED TO KNOW
RELEASED 1996
PUBLISHER Virgin Interactive
DEVELOPER Revolution Software
LINK revolution.co.uk
Broken Sword is a game that knows every great mystery needs a killer premise to hook you in. It begins with an American tourist on vacation in France, sipping coffee outside a Parisian cafe. Then a guy dressed as a clown blows it up. Most people would fly home and try to forget about it, but George Stobbart is not most people: He’s an adventure game protagonist. You know what those guys are like. Vacation be damned, he wants to know who tried to kill him—and he’s going to find out by picking up a bunch of random objects and solving puzzles with them.
Developed by UK studio Revolution Software and released in 1996, Broken Sword is one of the best point-and-click adventure games ever made. It’s beautiful to look at. The puzzles are great. The music is sublime. The characters are memorable. The story is full of twists and turns. And it’s funny. Like, really funny. It’s everything an adventure game should be, and age hasn’t dulled its edge one bit.
Four more Broken Sword games were released after this one, and while they all have their moments, the original remains the best in the series by quite a margin.
BLADE RUNNER
This story is from the August 2021 edition of PC Gamer US Edition.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 2021 edition of PC Gamer US Edition.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
YELLOW CARD
Flawed deckbuilder DUNGEONS AND DEGENERATE GAMBLERS rarely plays a winning hand
GODS AND MONSTERS
AGE OF MYTHOLOGY: RETOLD modernizes a classic RTS with care
SPACED OUT
After a strong first impression, WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINE 2 runs out of steam
SLIDES RULE
Redeeming a hated puzzle mechanic with SLIDER
DINER HARD
Rewriting the rules of horror in ALAN WAKE
"Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider"
Feeling like Lara Croft in STAR WARS OUTLAWS
LETHAL COMPANY
A return to some explosive post-launch patches.
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE
Enter the multiverse of modness.
TRACK GPT
Al's teaching sim racers to improve-what about other games?
FINDING IMMORTALITY
Twenty-five years on, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT is still one of the most talked-about RPGs of all time. This is the story of how it was created as a 'stay-busy' project by a small team at Black Isle Studios
