Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper

I was intrigued by this game. Advertised with a low level of difficulty I thought, why not give it go? How bad can it be? The answers to these questions are elementary. It is a very bad game which is good reason not to give it go.

Where to start? Story probably. You play as the most infuriatingly arrogant Sherlock Holmes in history whose voice, persona and demeanour and all terrible. Compared to any other reimagination, this Sherlock takes the award in the ‘biggest dickhead’ category. He puts Watson down at every opportunity, is very self-congratulatory over solving the simplest puzzles and is basically a total moron.

The case in the game is that you have to track down the infamous Jack the Ripper, something that Sherlock was never involved in, and this fact is explained away at the end of the game. The storyline involves you having to play through various areas of London and break the law in various ways such as stealing, vandalism and trespassing - none of which matter to a ‘consultant’ such as Sherlock Holmes - to catch the Ripper.

The game is classed as a point-and-click adventure game and has such elements as items that have one specific use, dialogues that have to happen in a certain order and a complete lack of freedom and direction that would otherwise enable you to complete the story in your own way. There are several examples of this through the game, the most notable being this; at one stage you have to move a barrel out of the way of the window. Now, I ‘m not the strongest person in the world but I’ve moved my fair share of heavy objects. This barrel was a reasonable size but like any object of a certain height with a small base, you can apply force to the top of the barrel to topple it out of the way. Sherlock can’t do this because he is too clever. Instead you have to use various bits and pieces scattered around the in-game environment to lever the barrel over – a lot more suspicious that just moving it with your hands.

Visually, it is very poor. I would have expected a lot better to have gone into a game released in 2009, especially one so dialogue driven. There is no effort with character’s facial expressions and you would find more diverse facial reactions in the Oblivion world and that’s saying something.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 40 Achievements

For a game so bland and linear it does offer a lot to do in the way of achievements.... I say that but of the 40 achievements available, 36 of them are main story driven so a simple playthrough leaves only four outstanding. Unlike Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, there is no redundant achievement for completing the game on hard.

All four non-story achievements are missable – none of them are secret and all of them are fairly straight forward. You just need to know when to do them and as it is a linear game, any guide telling you what to do will tell you when you need to perform these actions. The only one that caused me a problem was the Curious achievement which is for looking at all of the items in Sherlock’s apartment. I missed this because I went in with a mindset of just playing through the game. However, a missable achievement that you can replay and get in five minutes isn’t really a problem.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The game was not fun at all. It took a lot longer to play through than I expected and I found myself becoming bored and unconcerned with the outcome of the story, which is a major failure for a story driven game as I do quite often enjoy them.

A quick note on the reality of the story: Jack the Ripper was never caught and Sherlock Holmes was the master detective so combining the two means that the outcome doesn’t quite add up. So how does the game deal with it? Well, of course Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery and uncovers the identity of the killer. But he doesn’t hand him over to the police and instead creates his own brand of vigilante justice. Because, you know, solving crimes for the police is beneath the arrogant son of a bitch.