Product Description

In Secrets Of The Ark: A Broken Sword Game you'll continue the adventures of a heroic archaeologist. After reluctantly battling dragons, Mayan gods and becoming a Knight of a long lost Holy Order, George Stobbart settled down to a desk job. When a mysterious woman enters his life, it puts him on the trail of an artifact of great and terrible power known as "The Angel of Death." This weapon is hidden in the legendary Ark of the Covenant, and Stobbart is on its trail. Jump into the dark world of conspiracy theories, daring adventure and ancient societies, in the fourth installment of the Broken Sword franchise.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11561 in Video Games
• Brand: Dreamcatcher
• Model: PCO53550MB
• Released on: 2007-02-13
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Windows Vista
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 1.30" h x 5.80" w x 7.60" l, .35 pounds

Features

• Virtual Actor System enables the player to read character emotions and develop close relationships with the diverse cast of characters
• Globe-trotting adventure with featuring rich and varied environments from around the world for players to explore
• Challenging logic puzzles test your wits
• Gripping story mixes fact & fiction with traces of conspiracy theory to create an immersive new legend
• Authentic ancient artifacts and historical references blur the boundary between fact and fiction

Customer Reviews

George and Nico save the world once again
Charles Cecil of Revolution Software originally planned Broken Sword as a trilogy, but due to fan demands, American George Stobbart and Parisian photojournalist Nico Collard are hot on the trail of yet another conspiracy involving the Church and the occult (Templars). In previous Broken Sword titles, George and Nico traveled the globe investigating murders, cover-ups, and conspiracies revolving around the Knights Templar. Their fourth outing proves to be more of the same, beginning in New York and spreading to Istanbul, Arizona, Rome, and the Vatican.

There are several changes since the last Broken Sword game (Sleeping Dragon), the most glaring of which is the outsourcing of the game's graphics to Sumo Digital. The graphics are less polished, the colors flat, pathfinding is frustrating, animations are jerky, and most annoyingly, the bloated inventory (I was carrying the same items twenty hours later!). The 3D character modeling in cutscenes was horrible, and looked ten years old.

Also, the backstory is not as well developed as previous games. The character dialogue is, well, perfectly in character for George, with many witty comments, but the biggest problem here is that the story doesn't make you feel invested in George's adventure. Also, the part of the game that takes place in Phoenix was easily the weakest part, bordering on the absurd. Perhaps most offensively, the ending is all of.....thirty seconds. No, I'm not exaggerating. After you complete your final action, the ending is less than a minute, which left me deeply dissatisfied after spending twenty hours getting there.

The puzzles are, for the most part, intuitive: I only had to consult a walkthrough once or twice, and the answers were right in front of me. The unwieldy inventory makes combining items difficult, and you have no way to get rid of extra items that you've accumulated. Gone are the hated box puzzles from Broken Sword 3, and in its place is an enjoyable substitute, the "computer hacking" puzzles. I loved this touch, which seemed a perfectly believable addition to George's universe. He uses his PDA to hack into servers to look up information and override electronics. These are logic puzzles more than anything else, and can be solved by trial and error. Only one is a timed puzzle that has the potential to kill George if you fail, otherwise you have unlimited time (the only limit is your patience!). Like BS3, there are several "sneak" portions where you have to avoid detection by guards and monks.

However, there are several good things happening in Angel of Death (Secrets of the Ark in North America). The music is excellent, as usual: generally low key, with local touches in each of the locations. There is an "aha!" theme that plays when you solve a puzzle, providing useful feedback. There are several unusual locations to explore, including a a shady salami factory with mob connections, a communion wafer factory and Topkapi Palace (previously explored in the Discovery Channel's excellent FMV adventure Byzantine: The Betrayal). The voice acting, particularly George, was excellent as usual, except for a few weak spots (the African-American character slipped into a native British accent every other line). And the new Nico will be a source of debate: Cecil chose a native French speaker, but oddly enough, I'm so accustomed to the previous Nicos that the "real" French actress sounded fake! I felt detached from Nico in this game; she's in it only briefly, and is wasted in the Phoenix portion. And you get to play as George and Nico once again. Secrets of the Ark will definitely appeal to fans of the Broken Sword series, but there are too many glaring inconsistencies that may put off new players. There is a patch available on the game's official website that corrects some gameplay issues.

The Good:
+ You get to play as George and Nico
+ Music
+ Choice of locations
+ No more crate puzzles like BS3

The Bad:
- 3D Character modeling in cutscenes and close-ups looks ten years old
- Poor controls
- Noticeable lag on older computers / jerky animation makes precise movements impossible
- Plot holes / lack of backstory
- Nico's downplayed role
- Ending

Second thoughts, a really good game (my bad!)
When I first got this game, I thought I made a mistake. The controls were extremely sluggish making it impossible to control objects and complete any of the timed puzzles. I met the minimum specs for playing the game, so why didn't it work? Answer: get a game-quality graphics card and like ATI or NVIDA and the game plays smoothly. Once I got past the technical frustrations, I settled into the game. I did not encounter any other bugs whats-so-ever. The storyline is fun and new, and humorous at times. The puzzles are clever and not too hard, although on a couple I had to get a clue on-line (I hate doing that!) so they are not all easy. This is a great adventure game for new and seasoned gamers alike. I racked up 24 hours of game play so I got my money's worth. I would definitely buy the sequel to this game.

Very Disappointed
I'm a huge fan of the Broken Sword series and was very excited to hear that they were making a fourth installment. But it seems that the developers have created a 'broken' product. Out of the box the game was totally unplayable. I'd start a game up and it was snail pace slow frame rates. I thought at first my computer was not up to the task of running it but then i saw the system requirements which are:



Minimum:

* OS: Windows® XP/Vista(tm)
* CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium® 4 Processor
* RAM: 256 MB
* Disk Space: 2.6 GB Available
* CD/DVD-ROM: 16x
* DirectX®: Version 9.0c Required (Included)
* Video Card: 128 MB Shader Model 1.1 Compatible Video Card
* Sound: Windows® Compatible Sound Card
* Input: Keyboard, Mouse



My specs are as follows:

Amd 64 Dual Core Processor 3800 (2.0 ghz)
3 Gigs of PC 5300 Ram
Nvidia 7950 Gt 256mb Graphics card
Vista Home Premium.

I've got well over the minimum but still it won't run properly. I even installed it on another computer running xp with specs above minimum and still it won't work.

Normally I'm very accecpting of the reality that games don't work right for every configuration upon release. Developers will then release patches to address these problems. I've had the game for almost 2 months and I've not seen any patches released by the company. That is why I'm giving this game 1 star. This is a totally unacceptable amount of time to wait for a patch on a pc game. Its too bad that the Developer and Publisher didn't care enough about this game to give it the attention it needed. I never had these kind of problems with Broken Sword 3.