You play Sherlock Holmes. The detective.
I love crime stories. I love detective work. I should love this game.
The idea of running around deducing conclusions based on evidence is a great concept. Many people love the idea. Sherlock Holmes is also beloved.
There have been made several of these Sherlock Holmes games, but I will keep to reviewing this game as a stand alone and do no comparisons.
You go through 6 separate cases and have to solve whatever crime has been committed.
I liked 2 of the stories most. It was the roman steam bath and then the flower garden. The other ones were not quite as good.
I played the game with controller and never tried the mouse/keyboard combo. The controller mechanics were fine.
The game shifts between finding clues to deducing to solving puzzles. This never gets boring as they are spread out evenly throughout the game.
I love the concept and mechanics of the deducing part, but it not often used well. You very quickly get the idea that most deductions are 2 fold. So if you only have 1 deduction, wait a little, find more clue and then you suddenly have a choice. Most often these choices are extremely straight forward. The game also helps you out way too much.
Why does the deduction overview paint some choices red? Well because they clash with 1 or more other deductions you have made. Why tell me? Why not just leave it up to me to figure out? You are holding my hand and making me feel like playing with a handicap.
Why when I try and match clues are you telling me "Wrong". This is making it way too easy. Just try them all, one by one, and if some of them match, ding-ding-ding.
I also love adventuring crime scenes. I love walking around and finding clues. Looking at dead bodies and plotting routes in and out.
But why are you constantly prompting me "HERE... OVER HERE". The entire game feels like being played with a tutorial activated.
"Now press RB to activate focus mode", because there is now something you should focus on. Come on. "Now press LB" because Sherlock has an image in his head of how this might have been done.
You can examine objects. ALL objects you examine are important. All. And when you find an object you do not need, then it tells you that this object is of interest.... Because later in the game you need it.
It is insanely frustrating to have the game shoving the only fun thing of the game down your throat.
When do I, the player, get to do actual detective work? Sherlock is giving off all the clues. All I need to do is push the buttons when prompted and watch load scenes and cutscenes.
This might as well have been a QTE game. Which I am sure it is not. WHAM... MOVE STICK HERE AND PRESS.... TOO LATE... She died. WHAT? A QTE in the middle of everything. Come on. 2 Quick Time Events put in the game, and I apparently had to be ready for them. Whatever.
And mentioning load scenes. This reminds me. Optimize please. It was actually very smart to have the deduction and inventory part available during loading scenes, and the loading was not awfully long, but they are so frequent, that they annoyed we after the first 2 cases. I do not have that much deduction work that I need to spend that much time in there.
I also get to interrogate witnesses and suspects. AWESOME. Well.... Not really. You get to ask them stuff that you have clues about. This gives you more clues. And once in a while you have suspects that are telling you a lie, but the game tells you with a QTE that this is a lie. PRESS X... NOW. Okay I press X, but why do I need to? We already now they are not telling the truth as you do not prompt me unless they are. And then I get to answer with one of 5 clues, and only one of them is the write answer for the lie. But it is extremely easy choice unless you skip through all dialogue and do not at least try and play the game (which I am fairly certain you could do, and still complete it).
The only story that had me wandering around looking for clues a lot was the train station story. As the scene were big and there were quite a few, I was wandering around looking for "Examine Me"-popups too much. Well I knew I needed more clues because the game would tell me when I had done enough by giving me a cutscene, so I kept combing the scenes until I got it.
As long as you can't deduce a perpetrator because the game said you had too little evidence, then you need more evidence. This forces the player to just find all the clues. And as they are easy to find, if you miss some it is because you got bored when you finally could point to a perpetrator, that you just pointed to him to make the story end.
This game could have been awesome, and this type of game is right up my alley. But the implementation was dreadful. I am glad that there were only 6 cases
I love crime stories. I love detective work. I should love this game.
The idea of running around deducing conclusions based on evidence is a great concept. Many people love the idea. Sherlock Holmes is also beloved.
There have been made several of these Sherlock Holmes games, but I will keep to reviewing this game as a stand alone and do no comparisons.
You go through 6 separate cases and have to solve whatever crime has been committed.
I liked 2 of the stories most. It was the roman steam bath and then the flower garden. The other ones were not quite as good.
I played the game with controller and never tried the mouse/keyboard combo. The controller mechanics were fine.
The game shifts between finding clues to deducing to solving puzzles. This never gets boring as they are spread out evenly throughout the game.
I love the concept and mechanics of the deducing part, but it not often used well. You very quickly get the idea that most deductions are 2 fold. So if you only have 1 deduction, wait a little, find more clue and then you suddenly have a choice. Most often these choices are extremely straight forward. The game also helps you out way too much.
Why does the deduction overview paint some choices red? Well because they clash with 1 or more other deductions you have made. Why tell me? Why not just leave it up to me to figure out? You are holding my hand and making me feel like playing with a handicap.
Why when I try and match clues are you telling me "Wrong". This is making it way too easy. Just try them all, one by one, and if some of them match, ding-ding-ding.
I also love adventuring crime scenes. I love walking around and finding clues. Looking at dead bodies and plotting routes in and out.
But why are you constantly prompting me "HERE... OVER HERE". The entire game feels like being played with a tutorial activated.
"Now press RB to activate focus mode", because there is now something you should focus on. Come on. "Now press LB" because Sherlock has an image in his head of how this might have been done.
You can examine objects. ALL objects you examine are important. All. And when you find an object you do not need, then it tells you that this object is of interest.... Because later in the game you need it.
It is insanely frustrating to have the game shoving the only fun thing of the game down your throat.
When do I, the player, get to do actual detective work? Sherlock is giving off all the clues. All I need to do is push the buttons when prompted and watch load scenes and cutscenes.
This might as well have been a QTE game. Which I am sure it is not. WHAM... MOVE STICK HERE AND PRESS.... TOO LATE... She died. WHAT? A QTE in the middle of everything. Come on. 2 Quick Time Events put in the game, and I apparently had to be ready for them. Whatever.
And mentioning load scenes. This reminds me. Optimize please. It was actually very smart to have the deduction and inventory part available during loading scenes, and the loading was not awfully long, but they are so frequent, that they annoyed we after the first 2 cases. I do not have that much deduction work that I need to spend that much time in there.
I also get to interrogate witnesses and suspects. AWESOME. Well.... Not really. You get to ask them stuff that you have clues about. This gives you more clues. And once in a while you have suspects that are telling you a lie, but the game tells you with a QTE that this is a lie. PRESS X... NOW. Okay I press X, but why do I need to? We already now they are not telling the truth as you do not prompt me unless they are. And then I get to answer with one of 5 clues, and only one of them is the write answer for the lie. But it is extremely easy choice unless you skip through all dialogue and do not at least try and play the game (which I am fairly certain you could do, and still complete it).
The only story that had me wandering around looking for clues a lot was the train station story. As the scene were big and there were quite a few, I was wandering around looking for "Examine Me"-popups too much. Well I knew I needed more clues because the game would tell me when I had done enough by giving me a cutscene, so I kept combing the scenes until I got it.
As long as you can't deduce a perpetrator because the game said you had too little evidence, then you need more evidence. This forces the player to just find all the clues. And as they are easy to find, if you miss some it is because you got bored when you finally could point to a perpetrator, that you just pointed to him to make the story end.
This game could have been awesome, and this type of game is right up my alley. But the implementation was dreadful. I am glad that there were only 6 cases
Solid detective vibes.
i hated all those carriage scenes (sometimes they were SO meaningless), but other than that that's the great game, loved it