Sherlock Holmes Crimes And Punishments Review
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes And Punishments launches today for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, which means that it’s review time. Developed by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive, this game is the 7th installment in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series, obviously inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle‘s original stories. This is the very first game in the series to powered by Unreal Engine 3.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is set in the beautiful 19th century London, featuring all the small details from classic suits to cars. The game is actually based on a Russian novel called Crime and Punishment by author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which Sherlock reads in his carriage when you travel from place to place. The book’s main theme is about moral choices and this carries into the game; the addition of this element will make players look into themselves and try to figure out what’s the right thing to do according to their judgement and feelings. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments includes seven cases in total, varying from murders to thefts to disappearances.
Now that we have gotten all the intros out of the way, let’s get to the point.
After starting the game, you’ll notice the lack of instructions or any markers pointing towards the right way. While the Casebook tells you about the tasks at hand, it sometimes lacks information on where to go exactly, which can make the player feel kind of lost. After some time, though, I got the hang of everything and when that happened, everything became easier and slightly more fun.
Like in any detective game, you need to search the crime scene thoroughly for any details that might help you in finding the culprit. Searching the crime scene isn’t as easy as it sounds, although it offers 14 investigation mechanics, as some commands won’t pop up to you unless the camera is in a certain position, which can be irritating sometimes. I personally stayed in an area for more than ten minutes searching for one clue that was left, and it turned out to be a sign that the game didn’t prompt me to examine it unless I looked up with the camera, despite it being already in my frame. But I can’t deny that with each clue you find, the game gets more and more interesting and some clues can completely change your thoughts towards a character being innocent or guilty, just like in a real investigation.
After finding all the clues, it’s usually time to interrogate or talk to witnesses or people who were around the area at the time of the crime. Sherlock is well-known for his ability to quickly scan and gather immediate info about the person he is talking to by just looking at him, and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments portrays this perfectly. This ability enables you to draw a Character Portrait of each person you talk to in the game. Activating the ability will make the camera focus on the character’s face and by pressing the designated button to go forward, the camera slowly moves across the character; when there’s anything unusual, the blue ring used to search the character will become bright to notify you that this is a unique feature for the character. These Character Portraits are used more than once in the game to prove that the suspect you are talking to is lying.
Interrogations are quite easy and suspects don’t lie a lot, but when they do, you will be prompted to press a button in a very short amount of time and then granted a number of options to prove that he or she is lying to you. If you get it wrong or aren’t fast enough to press the button, the game will reload at this question until you get the right answer, which usually points to some evidence you found proving the opposite of what the character is saying.
Each clue and information you gather can be combined together through the Deduction menu, which looks a bit like a nervous system. You’ll try to combine clues together, if both of them make sense together, a small blue bubble-like thing will appear; if they are not related after all, the game will cross this option out for you. The Deduction menu offers you limitless trials and it gets a little tricky when you have several clues and possibilities, as this can make you arrest the wrong suspect which adds to the realism of the game. Overall, each case will have 3-5 possible solutions; in total there will be 6-10 different endings for each case.
Sherlock Holmes Crimes And Punishments also features mini-games that you will come across during the game, ranging from lockpicking to assembling Greek crossbows to using your chemistry desk to remove blood stains of a letter. These mini-games can, at times, get repetitive and be extremely hard to pass. Luckily, the team at Frogwares realized this and added the option to skip these mini-games; this choice won’t affect your progress in any way, but some of the game’s trophies are only awarded for completing these mini-games.
The game has significantly improved visuals in both environments and facial details over its predecessor, which is probably due to the Unreal Engine 3. Whenever there is a close-up shot of a character’s face, you can clearly see every detail and the same can be said for the environments and objects; in a game like this one, where spotting details is of paramount importance, the graphics enhancement actually helps gameplay. However, this improves on graphics’ quality had some repercussions like frame rate drops, which is clearly seen when you play as the game starts to get a little laggy and slow and this happened on PS4 not on an old gaming PC.
Sherlock Holmes Crimes And Punishments doesn’t have any kind of multiplayer mode, but it offers a fairly long (about eleven hours) and remarkably enjoyable storyline, especially in the final 3 cases, that will keep you hooked and eager to solve all of the available cases.