Nowhere near the Revolution they had in mind.

User Rating: 7.5 | Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon PS2
There's been some excitement in the build up to Broken Sword 3. Good old controversy has emerged throughout the fanbase after Revolution's lead maverick, Charles Cecil, ignited the fuse when he denounced the point-and-click genre as dead, pledging to push the genre forward by burying the traditional pointin' and clickin' and giving the third installment an LA sheen, where the Matthew Modine-esque protagonist transforms into Brad Pitt and endless box puzzles fuel this revolution, the revolution damn you!

Seriously, though, it's like making a sequel to a smash-hit film a decade later: will the story have the same flavour and will the characters still be as believable, or will it have aged badly? Sequels have a habit of being a major letdown because of the expectation, and it's especially disconcerting thing when six years is spent making the transition from old traditional adventure into a new generation of gaming, a genre where evolution has been slow and often unrewarded. I mean, Revolution's last promise of this type of new gaming resulted in the dire In Cold Blood.

Although, Broken Sword has a lot more going for itself than most other games. Blending a good dose of humour with dramatic flair, Revolution delivered two unique and successful games for the PS1. In the original game, cynical lawyer George Stobbart and French journalist Nico Collard fought off supremacist Neo-Templars that climaxed with the intrepid heroes blowing them up in a church. The Sleeping Dragon, to be frank, confirms that business is very unfinished.

In a wonderful introduction scene, Stobbart flies into the Congo with Australian pilot Harry Gilligan, to meet a client who wants to sign a patent on a strange invention. A storm breaks out across the sky, the plane plummets to the edge of a cliff, and George must escape fast. On the other side of the globe, Nico is suffering the trappings of a faltering career. Assigned to meet and interview a hacker who has made an unbelievable discovery whilst decoding a manuscript, she thinks little of the story until she hears a gunshot outside of his front door. Instinctively she goes to investigate...

From there on, the story does a good job pacing both George and Nico's adventure separately until their journey becomes intertwined once more. True to Broken Sword fashion, the adventure will see them both trot all over the globe; from Paris to Prague, to Glastonbury to Egypt, combating psychopathic foes and triggering mystical contraptions once more...

... But everything else is bad. A promising introduction is let down by a very tame script and forgettable characters. Charles Cecil has always taken inspiration from folklore and history, but the Sleeping Dragon flirts with mysticism shamelessly, sets up boring scenarios, a rushed plot with a very stupid ending. For a series criticised over the archetypal characters, The Sleeping Dragon is like a one dimensional personality. There's some returning characters - such as Stobbart's love rival Lobineau, and the digger who took Stobbart's gambling tip from the first game - but with a few exceptions, they contribute no humour whatsoever.

I dedicate this paragraph to the only puzzle in Broken Sword gamers still haven't figured out. Nicole Collard, possibly the most useless sidekick ever. Her ego seems to get bigger each time, and though she has her moments - the catfight with Petra makes the ones in Dynasty seem important - she's harder to like than ever. As she is less creative than George when it comes to item solutions, her scenarios are boring and predictable.

There is one part I loved. George finds himself in Glastonbury, in a moment that captures the spirit of Broken Sword. Here George encounters an old Englishman named Colonel Butley with a haw-haw accent, who he describes "has a latent aura of violence". Butley is on the hunt for his horny daughter who has left her home to get in touch with her sexuality with a tremendously arrogant hippy by the name of Tristram, who, to help the image how pathetic he is, self-publishes. Then, in a twist of genius, you have typical Irishman Eamonn O'Mara who has an intense love for poetry that somehow gets caught up in the mix. Hilariously, in a conversation about great Irish poets, Stobbart name drops Bono and is promptly threatened with a beating. This scenario is fun and the one time Cecil's revolution, the revolution damn you, shows a spark.

At first, the 3D graphics failed to impress me, simply because I felt the classic visuals of the PS1 games really captured a slick feel. The locales, such as the Paris backstreets and the view of the Seine are particularly breathtaking. Colour is used to perfection, in the sinister theatre or the dismal castle in Prague and, of course, the Congo looks stunning. But the characters aren't so refined: Nico has a terrible haircut and George just looks plain awkward with this "hunky" image the developers have given him. Other characters, such as the pale Susarro and leather harpy Petra look more like a circus outfit than fearsome foes. Animation isn't so great either. George and Nico running from danger can be quite frustrating when trying to get them to turn corners. Even worse is the item solutions being conveyed by George rubbing his hands. That's just lazy.

While writing this, I thought of the perspectives of the new gameplay without the point-and-click cursor. I think it can be great, although it might seem that some of Broken Sword's identity is being sealed with the new layout. The analog is a decent concept, the new control buttons are easy to learn and it will certainly help boost the game's enjoyment to platformer fans. However, everything is a little dummed down, making the overal product quite lightweight.

There are times when your character is threatened with death, in a very trial-and-error fashion. To escape this, the analog panel urges you to press a button instantly. This is both frustrating and patronising: death situations in the previous games required fast thinking logic, which applied pressure, but in The Sleeping Dragon pressing a button sinks the challenge of it all.
Puzzles occur more than the last games, which is an improvement, but they mostly revolve around moving boxes. A lot. At first shifting them around may seem deceptive but dealing with the puzzle on a frequent basis makes it easier to see through them. Transparent and rather tedious, it's gaming at its most unrewarding.

Inventory puzzles are low and the combining is rendered easy by the analog diagram, which gives it away. George gets the puzzles and most of the action while Nico only talks to people and gathers evidence. Furthermore, the gameplay proves adequate, especially when the sudden shift to stealth takes over. To be honest, it's a little daunting and uneven. Enemy A.I can be either clunky or unfair and there's only one way to foil them - by sneaking past them. I could only count one time where George was able to employ his old cunning to get past the guard. Broken Sword 3: meant to be a sloppy platformer or a cross breed adventure game? Revolution seem as if they haven't quite worked it out yet.

Musically, even without the great Barrington Pheulong, the soundtrack is beautiful. Songs depict the drama are stirring and effective, especially when they creep in during the more tense scenes. The pop song playing at the credits is great too. On the other side of the coin, the voice acting isn't so great. There are glitches that cut off end sentences spoken from the characters and the foreign accents aren't so good when compared to the previous games. Rolf Saxon returns and once again brings a lot of presence to the character of George; Nico is played by a different actress, Sarah Crooke, who I understand works in Revolution and begged Charles Cecil to let her audition. Her accent sounds English at times, although she does manage to have some of the French pronounciation right, but there are times when her accent seems forced.

So the Revolution failed to take off, and Cecil will probably have to eat humble pie next time around. Whereas Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and more sensationally, Grand Theft Auto have done this successfully, Broken Sword hits a snag. For it to recapture its glory, Cecil should observe the modern delights of The Longest Journey and Syberia, and abandon this new-age adventuring mumbo jumbo. It's better to stick with a loyal small fanbase than repeatedly fail to catch on with an uninterested mainstream and upset that loyal small fanbase. The Sleeping Dragon seems like an idea that fell short over budgetting. Lets hope that it isn't another six years before the raving kleptomaniac has another bash.