Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (Wii) Reader Review

The new introduction that the Director's Cut wedges in gives insight into one of the more striking new features; conversational portraits on the sides of the screens. These hand-drawn illustrations and animations were designed by Dave Gibbons, an artist that has also worked on Watchmen, Doctor Who and DC Comic artwork. These panels aren't lip-synced with the character voices, but they do animate, and help cover the glaring (if you played the original version) omission of regular lip-movement for the character avatars on the main screen.
The style of the visuals and cutscenes still impress 13 years on from the original release of the game, even if they would hardly make an N64 break out in a sweat, let alone a Wii. For those that look carefully, they will easily notice the sharper textures for the new content as opposed to the old. Inevitable really, but a shame that the whole game couldn't have been brought up the standard of the intro.

The user interface for the Director's Cut is greatly improved from the mouse of old. Tailored for the strengths of the Wii Remote, players will find easy-to-access menu options, large icons of the items needed to combine and examine in the characters bag or pockets, and simple conversational options to choose. In short, the pointer functionality of the game works extremely well, and will never be a hindrance. The Motion detection however, will.
In the original PC and Playstation title, what puzzles there were focused on theory and mouse control. For this Wii re-imagining, Revolution have embraced Motion control for the brain-teasers. Many of the puzzles that do this are new to the game, but most have very poor detection of the player's movements. Via trial and error you will be able to solve these conundrums, but you'll be swearing a fair bit before you do. Thankfully these puzzles make up a relatively small part of the game, but they can be an annoyance.
One other new feature of this version that relates to puzzles, and the whole game in general, is the Hints system. You can toggle it on and off on the starting menu, and you never absolutely have to use it, but as any Action Replay owner can attest to, it's dang hard to resist bending the rules a little. Revolution knew this, and depending on how many hints you use (if any, up to a choice of four at one time), it will impact upon your final score. Through some of the more illogical moments (of which there are precious few), this system can be a useful boon, but it is best used sparingly.

For Sound, the main draw of the game is the Voice Acting. For the newer segments of the game, this is brought to a more modern standard, with good quality speech, and effective role acting. It's a shame then, that Revolution didn't redub the rest of the game as well, since they were able to give George Stobbart (the main character) some new lines that heavily contrast in caliber when you hear the older stuff.
Music-wise, there isn't much to hear, aside from some dramatic tones when discovering a new piece of information or accomplishing a new puzzle. There are some tracks that play as accompanying background aides in places like Syria and Ireland, and this helps with the immersion of the game, but it is nothing iPod-worthy.

Typically, the main storyline of a Point-and-Click Adventure title lasts quite a while, and with the extra content in this version, it would take a first-time player around 10-12 hours to finish. Sadly though, there is little to come back to, as there are no extra features to speak of, aside from a 2 player mode almost exactly that of Super Mario Galaxy; a second pointer on the screen to help the main player along. It doesn't help either that Revolution actually cut some of the dialog trees and choices available to the player originally, and also simplified certain segments of the game for less frustration. Those who know what I mean when I say the word 'Goat', will find this a blessing, but also in the instance of 'Shock Buzzer', a missing interaction of the player's choice will most likely not go down well.

All in all, it is largely difficult to recommend the Director's Cut, despite the extras and the enjoyable core of the game. On one hand, this is arguably the greatest version of the game yet, and on the other, you have the braindead-hicks at Ubisoft charging full-price for it, which is an incredibly overinflated charge. I do urge you to play this game in at least one of its forms, be it the 5 Quid double-pack of the two main games on PC (that also works on Vista), the Playstation original, or the technical marvel that is the GBA version, but you really shouldn't get the Director's Cut unless it's on offer or available to rent; it's just far too expensive.