Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game
Score: 90% ESRB: Teen Publisher: The Adventure Company Developer: The Adventure Company Media: CD/4 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game yanks George Stobbard out of his newly acquired, very unadventurous life and into yet another mystery involving ancient rituals and secret societies. Visually, Secrets of the Ark is a very pleasing game. Like the previous Broken Sword game, The Sleeping Dragon, all of the characters and environments take on a very realistic feel (as opposed to the cartoon style of the first two games). The look of each location seems to go hand-in-hand with the feel of the game. Whether you are in an old temple with soft lighting or hiding above Stobbard's office in a decrepit old building, everything just seems to fit. Secrets of the Ark's audio aspects aren't all that bad either. Voice acting is, for the most part, dead on and the only parts that felt phoned-in were for minor characters that you only have to interact with once or twice. Like their appearance, each location's background noise seems very fitting.
Gameplay: In Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game, the hero of the past games has decided to leave all of his adventures behind him and take up a desk job as a bail-bondsman. One day, when Stobbard is just minding his own business, a strange woman shows up at his office and tells him she is running from some bad and violent men. Stobbard helps her escape and is left trying to uncover the secrets behind lost rituals that were once used to summon an ancient weapon. Stobbard's new adventure will take him from New York City to Istanbul, Rome, Arizona, and other locations from around the globe. Though the story has little to do with the past events (with the exception of George's apparent desire to get out of the crazy adventures he finds himself in), it still feels like a Broken Sword title. There is the overall mystery that reveals some dark ancient fact about our past. There are the bad guys who are after this secret and of course a femme fatale that gets our hero mixed up in all of it.
Difficulty: Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game is, like the past titles, a challenging but not overwhelming game. Most of the puzzles fit logically into the story and the answers rarely feel "random". I found that, for the most part, I was able to make it through each major hurdle without too much frustration and the smaller obstacles were just enough of a challenge to keep me entertained between the major plot points. Secrets of the Ark's story really helps to lend itself well to a whole slew of new puzzles that feel like new twists on old puzzles. And I found that even the more challenging parts of these problems were well balanced.
Game Mechanics: For the most part, Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game behaves like your standard point-and-click adventure. You mouse-over various hot spots (without too much pixel-hunting) and click to activate context-sensitive actions. If you are hovering over a block or something that can be moved, then the icon that appears will show you that you can move it. If it is an object you can activate or use, then a pair of gears appear. Using inventory items is the simple feat of moving the mouse up to the top of the screen (which causes the inventory to appear), selecting the item and then clicking on the hot spot you wish to use. George's responses are a little varied for objects that don't go together, but it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to run through all of the sound-clips, especially if you get stumped and you just start using all of your collected items against a hot spot. Secrets of the Ark is your standard adventure with a much more cleaned up look and feel, and even though the graphics look 10 times better than the previous title, at its heart it has the same good story that we have seen since the first installment and would be a great addition to the library of any fan of the series or genre.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP, 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 Processor, 256 MB RAM, 2.6 GB Available HD Space, 16x CD/DVD-ROM, DirectX 9.0c, 128 MB Shader Model 1.1 Compatible Video Card, Windows Compatible Sound Card   Test System: Alienware Aurora m9700 Laptop, Windows XP Professional, AMD Turion 64 Mobile 2.41 GHz, 2 GB Ram, Duel NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB Video Cards, DirectX 9.0c
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