Following the last Sherlock Holmes adventure and his fictitious pursuit
of Jack the Ripper, we now join him on another quest to solve murders, only
this time he has a far less annoying voice. That’s the only real difference
though. He is still an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who continuously breaks the law.
During the course of his ‘investigation,’ Sherlock Holmes commits a series of
crimes including but not limited to; springing a convicted mass murderer from
prison; blackmail; arson; countless amounts of vandalism and, my personal
favourite, murder. While on a murder investigation.
Still the most intriguing part of the game is Sherlock’s relationship
with Watson. He is constantly mugging him off, undermining his intelligence and
making him an accessory to his crimes and yet Watson still thinks this is okay,
probably because Holmes occasionally refers to him as ‘Mr Dear Watson.’ There
is no way any other human being would take the level of abuse subjected by
Holmes and still call them ‘friend.’ It is bizarre.
Visually the game is okay but I would have expected a little bit more
from a game in 2012. For the most part the sound effects and background music
win points for being spot on with the atmosphere of the game and in keeping
with the period, however there were a few exceptions to this. In the prison
area, the pace of the music is really fast and completely out of context with
what you are supposed to be doing. The music is so fast paced that it implies
you are in a rush to do what you have to do there which is not the case at all.
Gameplay wise there is only one criticism – some of the puzzles are
ridiculously hard to work out what you have to do. I’m not talking about the
ones that require you to solve mysteries with the clues you are given but more
specific when you have to define chemical compounds at Sherlock’s flat. There
are no instructions on how to use the chemistry set and I had to look it up to
figure out how it worked.
On the other side of the coin, the environment-based puzzles are really
good. They give a great sense of achievement for figuring out what you need to
do from the clues provided and most of this involves using your own intuition.
I do think that the character dialogues and interactions with the
environment could use some work. I’ll discuss the dialogue in the achievements
bit as one of the achievements relates directly to this subject. The
environmental interactions feel a bit silly at times. For example, you can
choose between third person and first person perspective. The differences are
that in third person, your character handles badly, can’t easily interact with
the environment and walks like a robot crossed with a brain-damaged rabbit.
It’s awful and there is no real need to use it as it seems like the game was
designed to be played in first person anyway.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 32
Achievements
Okay so there are 19 unmissable achievements for playing through the
main story of the game and three which are completely missable.
One of the missable achievements is for having three separate dialogue
conversations to enact Sherlock’s love of blackmail. Although to be fair, one
of these conversations is Watson’s, but still. Anyway what I would have liked
to have seen from the game would have been a variety of different dialogue
options that had a variety of different outcomes. You have three opportunities
to blackmail people but they are only there for the achievement and to make
Holmes look like an asshole. They have no bearing on any character outcomes or
the overall storyline. Basically, it’s one of those areas that had the bare
minimum work put into it to allow the game to function.
My complaint from an achievement perspective is that there is scope for
variety here which is unused. As well as the 19 out of 32 achievements being
story related, the other 10 non-missables are for completing the individual
puzzles in the game and the reason they are not storyline related is that there
is a feature that allows you to skip the puzzles if you are not able to do
them. While there is no conceivable problem with this, it is kind of weird that
this story driven game allows you to get its final reward (the ending) without
making you complete any of its challenges.
Another one of the missable achievements is for finding one item and
fully examining it. This item is in no way connected to the storyline of the
game so it begs the question... why only include one achievement of this type?
It feels very strange, almost like there was a plan to have a much vaster game
experience but it wasn’t completed and the game was forced into an early
release.
The last missable one is for completing all of the in-game puzzles that
you can skip, missable obviously because of the in-game ability to skip the
main content of the game. You have to do this on one playthrough though so it
makes sense, seeing as you’ve paid money for it, to actually play the game
through properly as there are no conceivable short cuts to unlocking this one.
Downloadable Content – N/A
It’s another Sherlock game that can gather dust or be sold once
completed as there is no replay value to the puzzles and no alternate ending.
It feels very rushed and underdone but in its defence, the puzzles are good and
offer a sense of satisfaction if completed without aid.
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