Despite the ominous-sounding title, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a colorfully animated adventure game that casts you as an American vacationing in Paris. But don't let cartoonish graphics fool you into thinking this is kiddie fare, as the game opens with a malevolent-looking clown bombing a café where you're sitting, leaving a man dead and many questions unanswered. Fancying himself to be a better detective than the local authorities, your nosy tourist dives headfirst into mystery and intrigue, hot on the trail of the killer clown.
Broken Sword uses a basic point-and-click interface, where moving a pointer around various onscreen hot spots allows different actions to be performed. Pointer movement is rather slow, and the use of a PlayStation mouse is highly recommended. Also sluggish is the load time when moving from scene to scene, which disrupts the game's pacing a bit.
Those willing to have patience will find Broken Sword to be a decent adventure game. Crisp graphics, smooth animation, and respectable voice acting help further the game's quirky plot, although the dialogue is downright hammy at times.
