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Way back in 2009, after a 15 year hiatus, the Gobliiins series was unexpectedly revived with a 4th entry; a sequel sadly blessed with a 3D makeover which, while not quite at the level of Simon the Sorcerer or Gabriel Knight's ill-fated adaptations, did rather lose a lot of the charm of the surreal series. Well, another 14 years have passed, and that obviously means it's time for another new game in the series! Will it reach the dizzy heights of Gobliins 2 or Goblins 3 (or, more unlikely, the astonishing Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth)? Or will it at least be a match for the quirky original Gobliiins? I don't know, but the game is in blessed 2D, is still from the mind of Pierre Gilhodes,* and is out now for sub-£10, so I plan to find out. * though no Muriel Tramis, sadly, so my expectations are somewhat tempered

Well now that I've finished Psychonauts, I thought I'd pick away at more of my unplayed PS2 collection. Broken Sword 3 I've had for probably around a year now and still haven't tried it out at all yet, probably because I'm partly bothered about it being entirely on the crap side, as I haven't hear many great things about it. Part of my reasoning to try out BS3 was to see how the third one fared against the original two, both of which are excellent point a click adventures of my past. BS1 is probably one of my own personal most nostalgic games of this type too, as it was one of the first for me to get into and play to the end. Technically it was Mad Dog Williams on the ST but that doesn't really count as it was a demo. The biggest noticable difference with the third title in the series is that it made the transition to 3D and also allowed you to directly control the character, and as I'm sure many of you are aware, this took something away from what made the early games special. I've decided to go into this without the expectation of returning back to what the old games were all about and instead just play it for what it is. I'm happy anyway knowing that there's a BS5 in the works via kickstarter anyway and may even try and locate the mysterious 4th title that most of us didn't even know existed, providing I get on with this game to some extent. Come to thing of it, I'm sure I might have actually created a thread for this a while back but fuck it, I'm here in a new one and will try and keep it updated with progress for anyone interested in learning more about what it's like. From my personal point of view, I'm hoping that the gripe most people had was the 3D transition, but we'll see. Main title screen So upon firing it up, I'm greeted by a rather dark looking title screen and after a quick look into the extras, it seems I can view a brief set of text with images the storylines behind the first two games. It was actually a good thing to see as I'd pretty much forgotten entirely what the original stories were about. The whole Templars thing started to ring a bell and from what I remember, you embark on a journey searching for answers to an assassination at a french cafe, eventually to uncover some dark masonic plan to unleash an evil. I think there was always a subtle element of fantasy towards the end of the game or here and there which I felt was quite cool to see as most of the time it was based around real believable material. I don't know if anyone has ever read James Herbert books, but the ones I read all seemed to have a similar thing going on where the ending would reveal a true fantasy ficticious finale, and for the rest of it, the whole thing was always plausably based on logic. Back when I first started BS, I had absolutely no knowledge on Mayans, Templars, Masons, Illuminati etc, where as now I've read and seen a lot of this sort of stuff, so I can usually relate better to it all. It made Assassin's Creed all the better too for the same reasons. Broken Sword 2 takes place 6 months after 1 which was good to be reminded of as I've forgotten 2 more so than 1. I tend to find the first game in many series tends to be more memorable than the sequals if played around the similar time preiod. I think it's a similar thing though this time revolving around a recovered artifact of ancient historical importance, and ultimately there's some sort of plan to uncover an (forgotten the word im looking for) apocalypic order of evil proportions. Interestingly there some other readable things in the same bonus section which talks about some geo electrical thing and quite interestingly, the great mysterious book of vonitch or whaever it's called. It triggered a memory about a similar thing I'd seen in a documentory about a year ago, and indeed, it turned out to be the same thing. Anyway I've only really just started the game so haven't gotten far at all, but graphically it was surprisingly quite good as I was expecting worse. I'm sure I read the voice actor who plays George Stobart is different, but he seems so far to do an alright job. Reminds me of the original one, unless I've just forgotten entirely what the proper Stobart sounds like. Unsure on the other voice actors. The story begins with George in a plane with a simple minded bloke flying a plane over a jungle somewhere in hope to find a scientist, but things go wrong as the plane crashes due to a storm and lands on the edge of a cliff. You begin by trying to escape the plane and bringing the pilot to safety as he passes out in the cockpit. Walking towards the front of the plane severly puts you in danger as the whole plane tips up. So far it feels like the old games as far as searching things goes just without the cursor but forces you to move around physically. Pushing a box to the back of the plane rebalances the weight. I also picked up a bottle of beer (which wake up the pilot better than slapping him in the face) and a bottle opener. Shortly after escaping George comes across the scientist who just so happens to be moments away from the edge of the cliff but is stopped by two evil looking blokes who I think kill him (not sure can't quite remember), but aparently he's trying to develop something that creates limitless power. Meanwhile you switch over to Nico who also makes a return to the series where she hears a gunshot go off in her apartment just as she's giving up hope on ever getting another interesting story to cover as a journalist. A guy who aparently has sussed out the hidden code behind the ancient Vonich manuscript also gets held at gun point. Little is known who that is though as of yet. So far it doesn't seem too bad at all, but time will tell I guess. I'll try and update this thread when I can.