Tablet and Mobile

Posts Tagged ‘shadow of the templars’

And early night? That was the plan. In bed by 10pm.

By 2.30am the batteries were losing the battle on my iPad and eyes were starting to go… the reason? Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars of course – now FREE for the iPhone and iPad.

Please don’t confuse “FREE” with “RUBBISH”. In this case the carefully crafted game is nearer to a work of art. I’m assuming they made it free as they’ve now released the next version of the game.

For those of you to whom this is new, Broken Sword was a PC hit many years ago. As described by the designers… “One of the all-time classic adventures, multi BAFTA-nominated ‘Broken Sword: Director’s Cut’ pitches sassy journalist Nico Collard, and intrepid American George Stobbart into a mysterious journey of intrigue and jeopardy. Guide George and Nico on their globe-spanning adventure, exploring exotic locations, solving ancient mysteries, and thwarting a dark conspiracy to reveal the secret truths of the Knights Templar.”

And that about sums it up – the game is easy to control, has voice throughout, the graphics have been redone for the iPad and iPhone with some great animations – and part of the storyboard has been re-imagined to give you everything form the French Nico’s perspective without destroying the original story. Indeed while the original game started in Paris with American George Stobbart, this version begins with Nico. Shadow of the Templars was the first of a series of 4 episodes originally and already on the iPad and iPhone, the second is available for purchase. Lets hope they do all four and keep the price reasonable – if so I have no doubt I’ll play the lot. 

This is not a mindless shoot-em-up like some other excellent-graphic-but-rubbish-storyline games coming out right now, the graphics are cartoon-like, not at all state of the art but for the iPad a refreshing return to true adventure gaming (yes, I have an interest, many years ago I designed one of the very first mechanisms for these games for the PC – lookup “Adven-80”. 

It’s rather frightening to recall that almost everything I know about the Knights Templar comes from a game!! Still – beats learning about killing aliens!

If you’ve any interest in adventure? never been to Paris? yearn to visit a pub in Ireland? Get this free game, be prepared to lose several hours and quite possibly get hooked on the genre!

Pete Scargill

Anyone for a country break?