Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

At least Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments can be broken up into manageable chunks in between your other gaming sessions. If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes or mysteries in general, I can’t recommend this one enough.

My time as Holmes was extremely exciting, fun, and immersive, and I was impressed with how long it lasted.

Nonetheless, for those who do like a good mystery, you probably owe it to yourselves to at least give this a look, and see how much it catches your mystery-craving fancy.

Sherlock's mind is presented in such a way that he is clearly a man treading the line between madness and brilliance, which makes this opportunity to play him all the more riveting and an opportunity not to be missed people who enjoy genuine detective fiction.

I clearly wasn’t as smart as Sherlock Holmes, but the game sure made me feel like him – something I haven’t been able to say about the other games bearing his name.

Fun puzzles, inventive murders, and new crime-solving features help make up for a morality system that needed far more fleshing out to be effective.

Has the great advantage of being accessible to all types of gamers, providing mysterious and fascinating investigative cases. There is much variety in puzzles and riddles, although the difficulty is quite low for an expert adventurer.

While the narrative is a bit disconnected, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments uses the short story framework to its benefit, keeping each of its cases focused on pure, thrilling detective work.

It may not provide much in the way of deductive challenge, but it succeeded more than any mystery game I've played in genuinely making me think.

In focusing on the cerebral side of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments manages to rise above its adventure game roots, presenting an excellent take on a classic character that, while propped on a foundation of less then interesting tropes, manages to feel fresh and captivating.

A great episode of the series, clever and well executed. If you're looking for an adventure full of mysteries waiting to be resolved, this is the one.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments delivers a good system for finding clues and solving murders with a complex clues and deductions system, plenty of puzzles to be had, and good mysteries to boot.

An interesting adventure game with a slow pace and a nice atmosphere, that brings a breath of freshness to the series, thanks to the introduction of some new features in gameplay.

It features a host of interesting mechanics that do a great job of capitalizing on the character and world of Sherlock Holmes, and the six cases are very intriguing. Crimes & Punishments is easily one of the best Holmes titles I've played, and I look forward to what Frogwares has in store for the next game in the franchise.

With clever puzzles and a dash of modern sensibilities inspired by the BBC show, Crimes and Punishments is an easy recommendation to armchair detectives - and the first to let players really experience being Sherlock Holmes.

It's a bit dumbed down and the graphics are sub-par, but other than that, Crimes and Punishments is a definite step in the right direction.

It is one of the most entertaining adventures the sleuth stars in. Nonetheless technically the episodes are rough around the edges – even more so on the PS4.

The cases are thoroughly enjoyable, but deducing the murderer can be nebulous and unsatisfying due to a preponderance of circumstantial evidence.

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson land on next-gen platforms with graphical ups and downs, but with the deserved quality these renown characters have in the literary field.

Those expecting modern hyper-Holmes will be aghast, but traditionalists will be all comfy pipe 'n' slippers. [Christmas 2014, p78]

Less crime and more punishment.

Ultimately Sherlock’s alright - not much more, but alright might be all you need in the quiet autumn evenings.

Over the last decade, Frogwares has been steadily eliminating the impossibly bad elements from their games, and what remains is the closest anyone's ever come to an authentic Baker Street experience.

In terms of pure gameplay this is perhaps the best serious detective game so far, but the issues with the script and characters remain more than a one pipe problem.

Its most brilliant innovation, though, is the chance to fail. Each case is a hunt for clues to populate your “deduction space”, a literally cerebral device where information snippets get associated with neurons in Sherlock’s brain, which you can mess around with to make connections. Once enough deductions are made, conclusions become available which allow you to close the case, finger a suspect, and decide their fate.

Visually, Sherlock Holmes is brilliant, from the detailed crime scenes to the realistic facial animations. The clunky gameplay, frustrating mini-games and inconsistent voice performances do detract from the overall experience though.

Perhaps Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments’ greatest achievement is how guilty you feel when you punish an innocent person – even just being able to get it wrong is a superb idea.

Poor voice acting and obnoxious back tracking let it down – but this is still on the right side of the law as far as we’re concerned.

Mini-games are hit-and-miss and frequent loading screens frustrate, but there’s a lot to like about this latest series of detective adventures with some immersive cases and a decent production quality.

A neat "brain pathways" interface helps you piece your findings together. [Christmas 2014, p.78]

Clunky controls, frequent and time consuming travels between areas and the ability to literally skip through all of the challenging sections are real setbacks to what could have otherwise been a very enjoyable game.

There's a clunkiness even Holmes can't solve. [Dec 2014, p.87]

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is not without its issues, but it is loyal enough to its source material and the adventure genre to make it worth a look if you're a fan of either.

The atmosphere is good, but there’s no real thrill since everything is just served to the player on a silver platter and most of the time is spent on a coach traveling between locations.