The Broken Sword series of games has had a long life dating back to the mid nineties, and has proved itself without doubt one of the leading titles in the point-and-click genre alongside Monkey Island, and Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, which appeared on the Playstation in 1995 has been given a makeover and released for the Nintendo Wii and DS.

If you have played Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars previously on another platform, such as the Playstation, Gameboy Advance or Mobile then you will not necessarily have experienced everything that you will find in the Wii and DS installment of the same title. The latest variations boast a variety of new content which older versions did not have, ultimately creating a whole new game experience with the same basic principles as before.

This is perhaps the firt real attempt at such a game for the Nintendo Wii, and a 2-dimensional point and click game on one of today’s powerful gaming consoles does at first appear quite strange and from the moment you start playing Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars you will feel a little retro-buzz, but what you will not be expecting is just how much fun such a game can be - even when compared to the standards we are all now used to.

The game begins with a nice introductory sequence to the game featuring Nico Collard, a french journalist who has been summoned to an interview with a well-respected industrialist gentlemen. However, he is soon heard screaming and as she attempts to rush to his aid she enters the room to find him lying dead on the floor, at the feet of a Mime artist. As you approach he weirds you out, for the want of a better description, then suddenly delivers a blow to your head which knocks you out - and when you eventually come around, he is nowhere to be seen.

That’s where the mystery begins, and the majority of the game from that point onwards is played in the shoes of George Stobbart who fans of the Broken Sword series as a whole will be very familiar with. You guide him through numorous locations as he takes it upon himself to assist Nico, together investigating the murder she witnessed in Paris.

There is very little to say about the gameplay and control system used in Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, as it is quite simply a point and click experience as you would probably expect from a point and click game! It’s very easy for anybody of any age to pick up and play instantly and that applies to both the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS versions.

The graphics, again, are certainly not worth shouting about as by today’s standards they are flat, bland and very dated - but such a game would probably lose a lot of it’s appeal if it were to venture into the three-dimensional age that we are all now so accustomed to. So with this considered, the graphics certainly do the job they need to do, and they do it very well.

There are a number of new puzzles and locations to work your way through in Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars for Wii and DS that players of the game on PC, Playstation or GBA will not have come across, too. The new puzzles vary in difficultly, and some it has to be said are plain frustrating, but all in all they strike a good level of difficulty without being overly hard to do.

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