Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game

Top marks for creativity, but the occasional flaws, bugs and, to repeat my oxymoron, lack of unnecessary depth, make it look like the game could have done with another 6 months of fine-tuning.

It's still intelligent and sometimes witty. But this time it's ringing with emptiness. [Nov 2006, p.94]

I don't see anyone anticipate a co-worker saying, "man, I wish 5pm would hurry up and get here. I want to get home and play Secrets of the Ark" in the near future. But I can see the adventure fans finding something of value buried in there somewhere with Mary of Magdalene.

It's a great game in so many respects, and we're overflowing with admiration that Revolution stuck to its purity of vision about what an adventure game can and should be about in the mid noughties. But when you're sat in front of the monitor filled with rage because of some utterly obscure puzzle, you'll have to question whether consistently busting a player's balls in so many ways is the right approach these days.

To put it simply, The Angel of Death is an exceptional 2D point and click title masquerading as a fairly good 3D counterpart. There is simply no reason why George now resides in a new multi-dimensional world, bar entertaining its weakest element – its physical challenges.

A decent new adventure in the (hopefully ongoing) Broken Sword saga, but its erratic quality prevents it from fulfilling its own potential, making it best suited to existing fans of the series.

I would only recommend it to the most dedicated of adventure game fans, particularly those familiar with the previous games in the series.

I was a little annoyed when the ancient mysteries ended up revolving around the Knights Templar and the Ark of the Covenant. Haven’t those two things been involved in enough ancient mysteries without trotting them out for yet another?

In fact, everything about SoTA feels done in a perfunctory and barely interested way. [July 2007, p.58]

If you have the perseverance to stick with puzzles that have been designed to test the patience of time itself, the slow introductory pace and continuous struggles with the game's interface (the genre's weaknesses as a whole) then Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death probably provides everything you're looking for.

Time and again in The Angel Of Death, a perfectly obvious solution is ignored in favour of an absurdly contrived one, and whenever a puzzle hinges on the responses of NPCs... these prove bizarre and unpredictable. [Nov 2006, p.84]

Deliberately lacking ambition, this is an encore that will please patient fans, but also reminds us why the point-and-click adventure is now an endangered species.