Broken Sword — The Smoking Mirror is the sequel to Broken Sword, a game I haven’t played, but probably will grab soon since I like to do things out of order. Designed for universal support on iDevice, Broken Sword — The Smoking Mirror has been remastered, so its graphics look sharp and its audio tracks are crystal clear (and available in several languages).
In Broken Sword — The Smoking Mirror you play as George Stobbart who is trying to rescue his girlfriend,Nico, from some large Central American Indians. There’s some intrigue over an ancient stone, but since I’m only 38 percent of the way through the game I don’t know how that’s all going to play out. Also, why would you want me to spoil the game? Find out yourself!
Broken Sword’s interface is user-friendly, relying on tapping, holding, and dragging to cause George’s interaction with items and people. There’s not much of a learning curve here, and the game, so far anyway, doesn’t seem to require particularly quick fingers. Controls are slow to respond on rare occasions, but this tends to be the result of overzealous tapping on the user’s part.
Broken Sword — The Smoking Mirror has been a fun throwback to the games I played growing up (Sierra and Lucasarts, all the way). The pace of the game is steady — I’ve spent enough time with it so far to feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth, and the puzzles are challenging enough to make you think as much as you’d want to when playing a video game.
My favorite aspect of Broken Sword, though, is its Dropbox option for saving. Since the app is universal, saving to Dropbox allows you to restore your iPhone game on iPad and vice versa. Not only does this mean you will fully get your universal money’s worth (assuming you have access to both devices), it’s added value is just plain smart. I hope to see this becoming standard in universal-game apps. Obviously the game looks best on iPad’s large screen, but I’ve spent most of my game time on iPhone 4 with no complaints.
I’d highly recommend Broken Sword — The Smoking Mirror: Remastered to anyone with a penchant for point-and-click adventure games.
