Broken Sword The Sleeping Dragon

The bedrock of its success is Revolution's ability to spin a compelling yarn that sucks the player in and keeps them there, held together by a cunning puzzle system that's satisfying without straying too far into the realms of obscurity.

The third episode once again features George and Nico, sucked into a good vs. evil tale that kicks off with a plane crash in the Congo and a murder in Paris, before following the trail of evil via Glastonbury and eventually Prague. An evil bunch headed up by a deathly ill looking man by the name of Sussaro are determined to harness the power of Ley lines or Dragon Power to their own nefarious ends, and naturally you've got to put a stop to their plans in true save-the-world-and-get-the-girl adventure game style.

At the core of The Sleeping Dragon, the fundamentals of the gameplay remain mercifully intact. It's still very much a case of talking to everyone you possibly can, picking up everything that's not nailed down, being incredibly observant and applying a degree of lateral thought that only ever seems to be required for adventure games. Anyone hungering for a gaming style long since thought defunct will be delighted to see the whole concept dragged up to date with a better control system, radically improved graphics and a less frustrating interactive element.

As any hardened adventurer will ruefully note, many a gameplay hour was lost to the old gameplay mechanic of having to literally trawl your mouse cursor over every last pixel in order to discover some obscure object that you had to pick up. The Sleeping Dragon 'cheats' by basically displaying twinkling stars on anything that you can interact with. But die-hards don't need to worry about the dumbing down effect too much. What might cause some sleepless nights for purists are the regular action-inspired elements that force you to solve numerous block-moving puzzles in classic Tomb Raider style, as well as more Lara-inspired moments that have George and Nico forced to leap across gaps, shimmy across ledges, negotiate spike traps and so on. If there's a chasm to traverse or a thin ledge to shuffle across, the command interface will indicate this in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and allow you to perform said task with one click of a button.

In terms of its interface, it's as fluid as we've ever seen being almost totally free of menu layers and clutter. Hitting select calls up the inventory subtly in the top left of the screen, allowing you to cycle through your random tat and combine the egg with the hoover (or whatever) in a couple of button presses, without ever taking you away from the main screen. In common with most adventure titles, there's no combat and therefore no need to worry about health or ammo stocks. It might feel restrictive if you're used to third-person action adventures (and that's what it feels like, given the direct control over their movements), but once you return to the mindset of pure adventuring it makes for a refreshing change to actually have to think your way out of a situation rather than merely charge in with a rocket launcher.

Without giving too much away, the game is structured to allow Revolution to weave various simultaneous strands before finally joining them all up and allowing you to make sense of it all. Fans of the previous titles will also appreciate the way old characters make an appearance, and elements of the old titles' story make sense in the light of events in The Sleeping Dragon. It's not essential to know much about the previous games, but it will definitely help, and maybe old hands will appreciate the style far more than newcomers.