Thanks for the recommendation. I have not played it.

My favorites tend to be in mystery/horror/sci-fi (and also some comical ones like Runaway or Captain Morgane) variety of pointing and clicking your way to solving the mystery...and really, I play them more for the stories themselves. For instance, most shooters have little story. DS9 The Fallen is one of those rare exceptions. I generally prefer being immersed in the story/characters much like Gabriel Knight or Longest Journey/Dreamfall.

Most of the Trek games are boring because they are all some form of shooter or starship combat simulator (I mean that can be fun sometimes) but most completely lack the awe and wonder of exploration and discovery that Trek is supposed to be about -- and exemplify point and click style adventures. Star Trek 25th Anniversary, Star Trek Judgement Rites, and DS9 Harbinger all did that very well with traditional point and click mystery adventures (and yet still managed to get in some of the fun ship to ship combat, as well). I don't mind some combat mixed in with the point and click adventure. I like the game to have some variety, but most of the Trek games these days are all combat and nothing else. TNG's A Final Unity was in the same vain as 25th, Judgment Rites, and Harbinger, although...

I haven't finished playing it. I'll have to let you know. So far not as good as 25th andJudgement Rites, but still a refreshing return to that mode.

Why am I just now playing it? A Final Unity sat on my shelf for almost twenty years...and yet no computer I have ever owned (until now) has been able to play it. It was designed for Windows 3.1/95/98 in DOS mode, but my 3.1 machine couldn't play it. Not enough processor. My 95 machine couldn't play it. Wrong video card. My windows 98 machine (which was a powerful monster workstation for its day) couldn't play it. Wrong sound card. Are you kidding me??? I didn't think there was a computer ever sold that could actually play this game.

Irony of ironies....twenty freakin' years later, I can play it on my Vista machine (and probably 7 and 8) via DOSbox and compatibility mode. None of the machines it was designed for could play it. That was the problem with a lot of the old games. It seemed if you didn't have a specifically customized computer for every specific game and identical to the computer sitting on the programer's desk, you couldn't play it. I'm not sure how they expected people to play their games. But twenty years later, the much maligned Vista/7/8 can play old games and old software better than their predecessors. Go figure.

As we speak, I'm playing The Last Express (built for Windows 95) natively on Windows 8 without any patches or even compatibility mode. It's another one that's been sitting on my shelf, unplayed, for twenty years - and suddenly i can play it...on Windows 8. Again, go figure.
Funny I was just mentioning that. I've begun playing it recently.

I have psychic moments at times. x)

YES! Someone else who's played this game! lol~ I loved it -- I really got a kick out of Mona-in-terrible-denial and her wisecracking-bat sidekick XD

to pimpmonkey2382

Clearly. ;)

Yeah, her denial was the funniest running gag. LOL.

I'm probably in the minority, but...

I really LIKED The Sleeping Dragon (a LOT) and consider it by far the best of the series <everyone gasps>, with Circle of Blood (aka Shadow of the Templars, aka Broken Sword 1) coming in a very close second <everyone gasps bigger, a woman screams and passes out>.

I think people disliked BS3 mainly because it broke with the 2D cartoon look in favor of 3D animation (and, yes, the box puzzles could be a little repetitive), but it was a hell of a game, complex and a thoughtful story, and with some fun action - and it was by far Nico's strongest outing as an action/adventure heroine. It explored Nico's character pretty deeply. (I like Nico ;D ) It was a darker and more immersing game with a sense of realism, but still true to its Circle of Blood roots.

The Smoking Mirror (BS2) was decent enough, but it felt a lot weaker to me than 1 and 3, with the 4th installment probably being the weakest of the four.

But to me, the third was best. I loved it. And (story-wise) a truer sequel to the original, I felt, than even the 2nd one, despite being a different style animation.

<Scott ducks as pies are hurled at him.> ;-)

As long as we agree The Angel of Death is the weakest of the (now) five, it's all good. :P

I understand what you're saying, trust me when I say I had to stand up for Sleeping Dragon, it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I would be lying if I said I liked the transition from 2D to 3D, but that's pretty much my biggest complaint with the game. For Nico fans it has to be the best in the series, for sure.

I would rank them like this:

1. Shadow of the Templars (closely followed by)
2. The Smoking Mirror (ex aequo) The Serpent's Curse
3. Sleeping Dragon
4. The Angel of Death (barely passable game, if I say so myself)

My tastes may be a little different. Often series games that people dislike as the "worst" of a series (i.e. Broken Sword 3, Gabriel Knight 2) I relish as the best of the series, where I feel kind of "meh" about some of them that are universally praised. I'm weird that way, lol!

(And it's not to be contrarian. The games I like, i discover are "bad" in the reviews after I already loved them, and visa versa. I'm just weird, lol!)

The X-Files Game was another example. That was a great game but widely maligned, as I recall.

Eh, same diff. *whistle* lol~ They're both by Amanita, so they have the same kind of feeling... and yes, it was me XD

Welcome hscott2hughes! Take off your coat and stay awhile. This is a great community and I look forward to you enhancing it in your own way. You are a man after my own heart, as far as gaming goes. As you can see from my avatar, the mammoth from Syberia, I am into point and click adventures. Funny thing about NCIS is I got the game as a present to play on a PS3. My son moved out and took his PS3 so I have never played the game. From the sounds of it I should not waste my time.

Looking forward to seeing you here in the future.

Hehehe, yes, we can agree on that. Not a *bad* game, but definitely the weakest of the Broken Sword series. For one thing, it just felt very milquetoast...just kind of blah...and rather short.

It just...well, it needed more Nico. ;D

Thank you, 51-[NIKO]-pol! Yes, clearly, we're like minded folks. ;-)

You're not missing much with NCIS. First off, they used the series actors' likenesses, but none of the series actors (except Ducky) voiced their own characters. The wrong voices can be jarring, but I can look past it if the story and game are good. There was no story. If there was, I couldn't tell you what it was. You just went from HQ to a random crime scene to HQ and then another random crime scene. There were two steps to solving the crime. 1) Take pictures of the crime scene. and 2) Go back to HQ and put the pictures on the "Deduction Board," which is a process of illumination puzzle to discover the killer. A 3rd grade level elimination puzzle, like you see in a 3rd grade standardized test, over and over again (because people who watch NCIS are "old" (over 35) and "old people" are stupid.) That's it. That's the game.

Ziva has a couple a decent one-liners. Those two one-liners cost me forty bucks.

You should try Cognition, if you haven't done so, already. The only other game as intense and immersive that I've played is The Walking Dead Season 1 which is FANTASTIC! (I don't have Season 2, yet)