Of all the games I was looking forward to playing last weekend at New York Comic Con, you better believe that Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director’s Cut was certainly not one of them. In fact, I had never even heard of it before innocently wandering over to the Ubisoft booth, but it caught my eye, so I thought, what the hell? I picked up the remote and quickly realized what I had in front of me—a murder mystery point-and-click adventure in the vein of Hotel Dusk. In other words, it’s a third-party Wii game that I would certainly like to spend more time with.

When I compare Broken Sword to the DS mystery title Hotel Dusk, I don’t mean in terms of graphics, but the actual tone of the game. Broken Sword, which is actually a reimagining of a 1996 PC game, uses puzzles, items, dialogue, and other clues to solve a brutal murder that has been witnessed by the protagonist. The game uses a colorful, detailed look, a change from the gritty grays of Hotel Dusk. The controls are similar to the Wii port of Sam & Max Season One, with the remote being used for pretty much everything: picking up and collecting objects, talkings, opening doors, and moving around.

What makes Broken Sword a little more interesting is the ability to take a closer look at certain things in the game to gather clues about the murder. For example, at one point, I was standing over a dead body, which I naturally glanced at. However, instead of just a standard “look at” command, I investigated the dead man more closely, looking at his wound and checking his pockets. The investigative aspect adds more layers of strategy to the title, and honestly, I wouldn’t mind playing the whole thing through right about now.

Maybe I’m a little biased because I’m a lifelong fan of point-and-click games, but I think taking advantage of the Wii’s control scheme to make a game of this genre is a perfect fit. Add an intriguing story and interesting gameplay options, and that’s pretty much a winner in my book. I need to play some more before I got a better idea of how good the game really is, because the story is a hugely important part of any point-and-click game. However, I would have to say that Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director’s Cut was probably my biggest and most pleasant surprise of NYCC, if only because I didn’t even know what it was until two days ago. Now that I do, I definitely want to play it again.

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