Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror
Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror is a 2D adventure game played from a third-person perspective. Via a point-and-click interface, the player guides protagonist George Stobbart through the game's world and interacts with the environment by selecting from multiple commands, while Nicole Collard is also a playable character in selected portions of the game. The player controls George's movements and can engage in dialogue with other characters through conversation trees to gain hints of what needs to be done to solve the puzzles or to progress the plot. He also have to collect objects that can be used with either other collectible objects, parts of the scenery or with other people in order to solve puzzles and progress in the game. By right-clicking on an object, the player gets a description and clues. The player character's death is possible if he makes a wrong decision.
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Unfortunately, I did like this a bit less than the first game for a couple of reasons: Some parts of the story seem a bit... disjointed. You play as both Nico and George and sometimes, the transition between the two is a bit awkward, mainly because of clumsy time jumps.
In addition to that, a few puzzles proved to be more tedious than fun (looking at you, maze puzzle). I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I had to look up a walkthrough once because I just couldn't wrap my head around the insane point & click adventure logic that the game was throwing at me.
Still, The Smoking Mirror is a great experience that had me hooked from the start. It's fun and nostalgic and really one of the best adventure games out there.