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Once upon a time, a brilliant genre of video game known as adventure once reigned supreme. Adventure games have long since become a vary rare breed of game, since the masses tend to flock to anything that lets you spray bullets into countless enemies. Every once in a while though, an adventure game comes along and silently collects dust on the shelves of your local EB World, lacking the quality and charm that the genre was once so well known for. Now along comes Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, the first adventure game in ages that actually has the potential to bring adventure games back to the mainstream once again.

Broken Sword is by no means a new phenomenon. The Sleeping Dragon is actually the third installment in the Broken Sword series. Fans from the previous games will be overjoyed at the quality gaming they will get from The Sleeping Dragon, while newcomers, needing no experience, will be stunned by how good the game is.

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is void of the typical kung fu, gun wielding, and weapon swinging that you see in today’s average video game. Instead, The Sleeping Dragon’s gameplay is based completely and totally on puzzle solving. I don’t mean locked door requires a certain switch to be pulled puzzle solving, I mean thorough, mind bending, yet very realistic puzzles that will keep you guessing, sometimes for a lot longer than you would expect. From the very beginning of the game, you are solving puzzles. The first puzzle in the game has you trying to escape a totalled plane wreck without tipping it over a ledge from your body weight. It’s puzzles like this that will be frying your noggin throughout the entire game, from mysterious beginning to climactic finish.

In Broken Sword, you will take control of two characters alternately: George Stobbart, a patent lawyer from America, and Nico Collard, a newspaper journalist from Paris. Each character is brought into the story in a very different way. George is on his way to meet a scientist when his plane crashes. Nico has a meeting with a computer nerd who’s raving proclamations about the end of the world. When she shows up for the meeting at his apartment, he is dead. While these two events may seem very irrelevant, the story soon twists and twines things until everything becomes one, and you, as the player, are baffled and amazed by storytelling brilliance. For the sake of not spoiling anything, I will say no more, but be prepared for one of the most well crafted stories to hit a video game since who knows when.

The Sleeping Dragon was originally a PC title, and has been ported to Xbox, but thanks to a well developed control scheme and responsive movements, you can’t even tell that the game was originally developed for the PC platform. Everything translates so well to the Xbox controller that even the simplest of gamers will be able to get used to the games mechanics in no time. Pushing crates, talking to locals, navigating tough terrain and using items to solve puzzles are just a few of the things that Sleeping Dragon will have you doing during the duration of the game.

In a game like this, it’s really the core gameplay that makes or breaks things, but slick graphics can’t hurt much, right? Broken Sword may not be a visual masterpiece, but it brandishes sharp, clean graphics that are bold and colourful, really making the game a vibrant experience. Character models all have a sort of stylized look to them to the effect that they don’t look realistic, but they don’t look like cartoon characters. The environments in the game, while never overly large, are bright and bold. Each area has multiple people to talk to, all rendered with just as much crafting as the two main characters.

The game sounds nearly as good as it plays, with great voice acting for the most part, and some very well written dialogue, the audio really brings the game to life. There isn’t much of a soundtrack for the most part, and what’s there is basically just as a finishing touch, it really doesn’t add much to the experience. There are a few instances in the game where the dialogue breaks up between lines with long pauses, but there really isn’t much else to complain about in the way of sound.

If any one game can bring adventure games back on the map, Broken Sword is undoubtedly it. You may not be brandishing firearms, or judo jump kicking anyone in the face, but there is plenty of fun to be had in The Sleeping Dragon for those willing to give the genre a chance. Anyone that builds their collection off a range of shooters should probably stay away, but anyone willing to give the ol’ grey matter a workout should definitely give Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon a look; you’ll be happy.