Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (PC) Review

During the events of the first game - The Shadow of the Templars - series protagonist, George Stobbart, serendipitously met with other series mainstay, the investigative reporter, Nicole Collard, and the two quickly found themselves embroiled in a worldwide mystery.

This title picks up six months after the first game and finds George and Nicole now a couple. A simple investigation into a Mayan relic escalates quickly, Nicole is kidnapped, and George is fighting for his life. Soon after, the pair finds themselves racing against time to stop some fanatics raising a dark god… as you do. It all sounds like quite the exciting epic but, sadly, it really isn't.

The story begins strong but quickly feels like it over embraces the comedy aspects of the first, with the jokes, in particular, suffering the most. Gone is any trace of wit or banter and, instead, the comedy just feels slapstick, and at points simply cringe-worthy. The narrative doesn't fare much better, and although there are admittedly some strong moments, they are either at the very beginning or the very end, with the rest feeling like filler. There are some painstaking moments where new areas are opened, filled with people to talk to and things to examine and there's nothing there. Nothing. Examining every item results in just a few silly comments and the NPCs deliver nothing of value. It's a very strange design decision...

The gameplay is classic point and click adventure. George and Nicole wander around environments, interacting with the items there and trying to gather information from NPCs and solving puzzles to progress.

The biggest issue with the game, though, are the puzzles. They are on par in difficulty with the puzzles in Telltale games. There would be very few players out there who won't simply look at the setup of the puzzle and fairly quickly see the painfully obvious solution. There is no logical thinking or problem solving required here and the included "Hint System" is unlikely to see any use.