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The mother of all investigations.

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is now available DRM-free on GOG.com, 70% off until February 8, 2PM UTC.
Does supernatural evil have a place in Sherlock's rigorously rational world, governed by cause and effect? Consumed by a terrible sense of uncertainty, Sherlock launches himself against the haunted streets of London, prowling for evidence that only his keen deductions, timely punches, and bold infiltration can yield.

Test your sleuthing skills further with our special Detective Stories Sale, featuring several mysteries worth solving, up to -90%. Sale ends February 5, 11PM UTC.
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Vythonaut: There's something wrong with the trailer GOG. ;) Other than that, while the game looks great, i read that it contains a lot QTEs, maybe because the game also released on consoles (or better, maybe because it was designed for consoles). Just a warning for those who don't enjoy QTEs at all.

Let me quote this: "Frogwares has long padded its Sherlock Holmes titles with ill-advised action sequences, usually heavy on button-matching QTEs and other design cues lifted from ten-years past. Some are so-bad-it’s-good (playing as Holmes’s dog in Testament) while others are plain bad (pretty much everything else).

It reaches a peak in The Devil’s Daughter. A solid 50 percent of this eight-hour game involves Holmes and occasionally Watson futzing through QTEs in order to forge a knife, revive an unconscious man, win a bar fight, or some other drudgery.

source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3085415/software/sherlock-holmes-the-devils-daughter-review-a-dreadful-case.html
That review doesn't do the game any favours, does it now?


Well, 53 USD plus change, to have an adventure game frustrate me with QTE for half its duration, no way. Not even the current sale price seems justified. Not to mention the regional pricing in general.

Also, where's Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments?

On the plus side, I have all but one (besides this new release) from the current mysteries sale, plus a couple more Holmes games not on GOG.
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Mafwek: Well, AAA titles will cost 100$ without discount in near future, 70% sale will be close to 25$.
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real.geizterfahr: I'm not complaining about games being too expensive (games are effin cheap nowadays, compared to what I paid for games like Wing Commander III and IV or for NES games). And I don't really care about the release price of a game. That's something the free market will take care of (if games become too expensive, people will stop buying them and they'll become cheaper again). I know that publishers are complaining about higher and higher production costs. But maybe they should stop making every game a huge open world title, that's always three times bigger (and emptier, more boring and more stuffed with completely pointless "Get me X pieces of Y" quests) than the latest open world title from their competitors -.- No, what I'm talking about is the prices of "older" games (a year after release).

When Steam became popular we developed something like a "sale culture". People don't look at prices anymore and buy games only based on the "X% off" on the front page of their favorite store. Have a look at Steam's forums during the big sales. People constantly bitch about games like Call of Duty because they never get a better discount than 50%. Or Shovel Knight... The highest discount for Shovel Knight was 33% and people are complaining about this "lame discount" all the time.

In my eyes those are fair discounts. I can either buy those games at full price or wait for a sale and save a bit of money. I won't get totally ripped off. Now have a look at games like this Sherlock Holmes one. €45 vs €13,50 is totally nuts. There isn't even a choice wether to get it on a sale or to wait and buy it at some other point. There should be a big fat warning sign on the store page NOT to buy this game when it's not on sale, because the regular price is just there to give the publisher the possibility to do 70% off sales. It's not the real price of the game and they don't even expect anyone to pay that much for their game. It's just the base for the "huge discount" we gamers love. Same goes for the Sam & Max games. €17 each? I paid 3,50 (or was it even €3?) for each of them. That's €10 for all three games vs. €17 for one of them. At least their series discount gives a pretty fair price.

Nah, sorry, I just hate crap like this. With prices like this you can basically pull the plug of the servers and only open your store for the big sales. It's stupid. That's one of the things I loved about the old GOG. When they were still young and naive they tried to fight those huge discounts. Their games were either 5.99 or 9.99 and 50% off was the best you could hope for. But that battle was lost from the very beginning. Publishers won't give you a "better" price than Steam gets and Steamers love their huge discounts, no matter what this means for the base prices. So GOG had to adapt themselves to this...
Well, average wage in Croatia is around 1000 $ a month. We can't exactly buy every new game at full price, regardless of what it is. And GOG is unfortunately powerless before the publishers when the newer games are in question.
Unreal Engine game, no Linux release. Developers can do better.
The game card reads FPP, or is it really both FPP and TPP?

Love Frogwares, they usually look after those peeps suffering from motion sickness:)

This sale has some real sweet deals on the Tex Murphy games. I've been waiting for them to go on sale. I know they are great from when I used to play them in the 90's.
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drmike: Ditto although I noticed Tesla Effect wasn't included. Hopefully this is an oversight as it;s the one I:m missing.
yes this is the best deal for the Tex Murphy adventures, I got them for double this price on previous sales. If you like the genre just go for it now.
Really nice sale - thanks, GOG!

Does anyone know which of that Sherlocks is worth playing? As far as I remember I completed Awakened years ago and it was nice. It would be nice to get another one (preferably one of these <3$).

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shmerl: Unreal Engine game, no Linux release. Developers can do better.
Agree!
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real.geizterfahr:
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real.geizterfahr:
Well put... If not for that last bit, about "having to adapt". As they did with everything.
Seriously, how the heck can one justify even $20 (which may become 20 EUR if you're in the EU of course, even in a country with an average net wage of... the equivalent of $661 on last report, I see, and a whole lot having less than that, and even less per person) for even a 15+ y/o game?
Granted, Devil's Daughter is a year and a half old. But it's not a major, sprawling title. Even having one of those at 50 USD / EUR (*ahem*) past a year may be a tad much, but I'd give it a pass at it till it reaches 2 years. This, however, is silly, yep.
But back to game age and price, yeah, don't much care for how it is for new ones, but I'd say that a $10 full price for even the most high quality, massive and well maintained games at 10+ y/o, and for most at 5+ y/o, is more than enough, and with no excuse to charge any region extra whatsoever, if there are any differences in what you make eat them and shut up. It's just milking your back catalog, not any current creativity or efforts. If anything, still having noticeable earnings from those is detrimental to the encouragement of continued development. But that's another discussion.

PS: Then again, the discount culture makes for crazy things everywhere.
Post edited February 02, 2018 by Cavalary
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ciemnogrodzianin: Really nice sale - thanks, GOG!

Does anyone know which of that Sherlocks is worth playing? As far as I remember I completed Awakened years ago and it was nice. It would be nice to get another one (preferably one of these <3$).

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shmerl: Unreal Engine game, no Linux release. Developers can do better.
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ciemnogrodzianin: Agree!
If you enjoyed Awakened I'm fairly sure you'd enjoy any of the other three games. However from memory, I'd rate them in the following order:

1. Nemesis (best puzzles)
2. Jack the Ripper (best atmosphere)
3. Awakened
4. Silver Earring
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drmike: Ditto although I noticed Tesla Effect wasn't included. Hopefully this is an oversight as it;s the one I:m missing.
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Dogmaus: yes this is the best deal for the Tex Murphy adventures, I got them for double this price on previous sales. If you like the genre just go for it now.
The issue though is the one I'm missing (Tesla) is not on sale. :(

edit: Guess not. Usually they're pretty quick if they did leave off a title to add it back on when it's noticed.
Post edited February 02, 2018 by drmike
YESS!!!! INSTABUY!!
8.60 U$D here in Argentina.

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Vythonaut: At full price it certainly is pricey, but with the current discount it isn't bad
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real.geizterfahr: That's exactly what I hate about prices nowadays. You basically CAN'T buy this game when it's not on sale. You either buy it when there's a promo or you throw it on your wishlist and wait for one of the big sales (where you have to decide which of your dozens wishlisted games you get). There's no "Today I feel like I want to play Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter. I'll go and buy it." because its regular price is completely insane.

Why not set a regular price of 25 whateveryourcurrencyis and limit sales to 50% off? This would result in a similar sale price (12.50 instead of 13.50) but would be a much fairer regular price for people who want to buy a game when they want to play it and not when it's on sale. Publishers surely love their "OMG 70% OFF MUST BUY MUST BUY MUST BUY!!!!!!!111!" sales -.- I hate them!
The pricing policy of Big Fish games is a good one; all the games has the same price...
( and all the games are the same, but that is another topic)
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groundhog42: ...
Thanks! As an atmosphere is probably the most important factor for me (Awakened wasn't perfect, but was close enough to Doyle's books to be interesting), I'll go with Ripper. I was looking at this one. Thank you for advice!
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groundhog42: If you enjoyed Awakened I'm fairly sure you'd enjoy any of the other three games. However from memory, I'd rate them in the following order:

1. Nemesis (best puzzles)
2. Jack the Ripper (best atmosphere)
3. Awakened
4. Silver Earring
Really? I honestly thought Nemesis kinda sucked. It had barely any plot, just plenty of very "puzzle game-y" puzzles that felt very little like something from a Holmes story. It actually felt like the series regressed a lot back to what the first one, The Mystery of the Mummy was like.

Jack the Ripper is definately the best one and feels most like Holmes. Except for maybe Crimes & Punishment which still isn't here for some reason :P Oh, and you forgot about the Testament of Sherlock Holmes, which was pretty good except for the somewhat strange ending.
Post edited February 02, 2018 by Breja
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Cavalary: Well put... If not for that last bit, about "having to adapt". As they did with everything.
That's one of the few things where I can't blame GOG for adapting. I too complained when they released Assassin's Creed and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 for a higher price than 9.99, but I quickly realized that they didn't have any real choice (except to refuse these games).

The problem is that there was a multi-billion Dollar industry vs. GOG's idea of how prices and discounts should be. GOG's idea was the right one (fair prices and moderate discounts) but it wasn't how this multi-billion Dollar industry was and is used to do their business. It worked with very old (pre-digital distribution) games. But with games from the age of digital distribution they had the choice to either do it how the big publishers are used to do it or to miss out on almost every game from 2005 or later.

No one would allow GOG to sell a game for 9.99 with a maximum discount of 50% twice a year (summer and winter sale) when the same game is 19.99 on Steam with 75% discounts all the time. Steam is the bigger market and they wouldn't like it. And Steam knows that their customers love those silly discounts, so they woldn't want to "reduce" the discounts to only 50% ("Y DIZ GAME NEVER GETZ A DECENT SALE!!!"-syndrom). GOG is too small to change anything in the industry. They can't even convince CD Projekt to respect their ideals (Witcher 2 = introduction of regional pricing on GOG, Witcher 3 retail = mandatory day 1 activation patch on GOG, Gwent = first game on GOG where Galaxy isn't optional). If they can't even do that, how could they convince a whole industry to change their entire business model?

People are stupid. They don't understand that lower base prices and lower discounts in percent are fairer and result in the same discounted price in Dollar/Euro/whatevercoins. They'd probably even celebrate base prices of 100 Dollar/Euro when they'd get 95% discounts in return -.-
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real.geizterfahr:
When the second player on the market is too small to matter, it should be a matter for authorities to regulate.
But otherwise, you're just making my argument that if that's how things stand they should have said they were defeated in their fight with the industry and close up shop, getting back to being the "pirates" they started as and advising the users to do the same since there's hardly anything worth supporting in this industry.

On another note, whenever I see your nick I get reminded of The Real Barenziah... And of the hour and a half spent reading stuff in the library of Vivec in Morrowind... Which I bought a retail copy of in 2007 for maybe less than the full current price of the digital one now here, 11 years later.
Have the sherlock holmes games been fixed for the graphics issues people were having with them?