Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

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.