Adventure games. The blessing and curse of single-player. If you think for a minute here, you may find it amusing that adventure games, one of the oldest genres in the business, is still here, alive and kicking ass, butt and why not, brains. This time, we review Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death. The title sounds promising, though "death", associated with "adventure", doesn't usually offer the kind of hype these titles need. I've been playing adventure games for a while now and I'm happy to notice that many developers are adopting 3D engines instead of the classic pre-rendered backgrounds, coupled with a fine quality voice-acting that gets you in the mood and completes this single-player experience. Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death keeps the pace and though it doesn't kill your video-card, it manages to showcase some astounding locations and characters for an adventure game. We'll just have to see how good of an adventure game it really is, since visuals should be the last thing we care about.

        Meet George Stobbart, two B's. After his patent lawyer career goes down the drain, we find him working as a bail bonds clerk in New York. Meet Anna Maria, a beautiful blonde waiting for George in his office and a few levels later, in his bed. Meet the goons, a few dumb Italians chasing Anna Maria for some manuscript she says she owns. George lends a hand and manages to help Anna Maria escape from the goons, though she was there for a totally different reason. She intends to decipher the manuscript and for this, she needs George's help. The premise is quite interesting and makes you wonder what happens next, but as soon as you play through the first part of the game, you'll realize that its plot twists are not that exciting as the writer intended them to be. You'll always figure out the characters’ next move and this leaves you a bitter taste regarding the storyline. The moment when you think Nico is dead is so poorly realized, that you never doubt for a minute she's alive. I think that most of the problems naturally appear because of the characters’ behavior and the nature they were implemented in the storyline. If you've played through the Broken Sword series, you quickly realize and expect a few things to happen, so many of the twists are not surprises any more.