FEARNET - The Testament of Sherlock Holmes http://www.fearnet.com/tags/testament-sherlock-holmes en Game Review: 'The Testament of Sherlock Holmes' http://www.fearnet.com/news/review/game-review-testament-sherlock-holmes <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle&rsquo;s super sleuth Sherlock Holmes has seen a massive resurgence in the media over the past few years, with no fewer than three revisionist takes on the detective in as many years.&nbsp; Guy Ritchie&rsquo;s version of Holmes injected bareknuckle action to the character, whereas Steven Moffat and CBS&rsquo; takes on the character (<em>Sherlock </em>and <em>Elementary</em>, respectively) transplanted Holmes and Watson to modern times.</p> <p>For years prior to this Holmesian resurgence, game developer Frogwares was happily plugging away at their own take on Holmes with a series of canonically accurate games, starting with <em>The Mystery of the Mummy</em>, which kept the tone of the game delightfully close to the source material.&nbsp; As the games progressed, however, a decidedly darker tone emerged, finally coming to a horror-filled head with games like <em>Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened </em>(which pitted Holmes and Watson against the cult of Cthulhu) and <em>Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper</em> (&lsquo;nuff said), which gave the games a brutal, M-Rated twist.</p> <p>Now, Frogwares has released <em>The Testament of Sherlock Holmes</em>, an adventure that finally brings to light the more unsavory aspects of Sherlock&rsquo;s psyche as he investigates the savage murder of a bishop, which slips right into pure psychological horror.&nbsp; Holmes, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him, had unsavory traits including drug abuse and sociopathic tendencies, and <em>Testament </em>explores these with some deep, dark questions that leave even Holmes&rsquo; stalwart sidekick John Watson questioning the great detective&rsquo;s methods and sanity.&nbsp; Could Holmes finally go so far off the deep end as to commit murder?</p> <p>These questions are asked in a game so tonally oppressive that the horror&mdash;as sparse as it seems at times&mdash;becomes amplified to gruesome heights that are somewhat unexpected from the character, even in the wake of the previous, horrific entries.&nbsp; By game&rsquo;s end you&rsquo;ll have examined horribly mutilated corpses, crept through red-hued opium dens, investigated desecrated graves, and dove deeper into the fragmented psyche of Holmes than any other adaptation has before.</p> <p>As deep and involving as the story can be, it&rsquo;s presented in the logical but flawed form of an adventure game, complete with the nonsensical puzzles that all but killed the genre in the 90&rsquo;s.&nbsp; After a deductive investigation which includes examining the mutilated, burned, and broken body of the murdered bishop, nothing takes you out of the mood quicker than a puzzle which involves moving a knight across a chessboard to open a safe.&nbsp; These sort of ham-fisted puzzles crop up fairly frequently, reminding you constantly that you are playing a game, and not a particularly well-designed one.&nbsp; There is a pleasantly Holmesian element in the game&rsquo;s Deduction Board, which tasks you with taking all of your collected clues and deducing the game&rsquo;s events, but it happens far more rarely than the game&rsquo;s offensive puzzles.&nbsp; I want to spend a Sherlock Holmes game sleuthing and deducing, not poisoning opium den patrons with bong water and ashes (that&rsquo;s an actual puzzle, I swear to god).</p> <p>The other issue stems from the game&rsquo;s &rdquo;open world,&rdquo; which simply does not exist.&nbsp; Those expecting a <em>Grand Theft Auto </em>level of freedom as they creep around London to catch a killer will find themselves in a still-limited world.&nbsp; London is a series of small sections of the city, which you navigate to using a static map.&nbsp; Once you get to each section there is a certain degree of freedom in your investigation, but it&rsquo;s pretty far from the &ldquo;open world&rdquo; that the developers promised.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a shame that <em>The Testament of Sherlock Holmes </em>had to fall back on clunky adventure game mechanics in order to tell its tale.&nbsp; The developers show a clear affection for the classic source material, from the flustered frustration of John Watson with Holmes&rsquo; unorthodox methods to the character designs ripped right from the classic Granada TV series.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a classic take on a classic character that, unfortunately, is hamstrung by its reliance on antiquated adventure puzzle tropes to fill out its gameplay.</p> </div></div></div><div id="comment-wrapper-nid-371285"></div> Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:30:00 +0000 Carl Lyon 371285 at http://www.fearnet.com http://www.fearnet.com/news/review/game-review-testament-sherlock-holmes#comments