Posted on: April 8, 2024
LeftHandedMatt
Verified ownerGames: 425 Reviews: 16
Confusing but it works... mostly
While it's a technical improvement over The Silver Earring, I think I enjoyed the story here a bit less. The Lovecraft inspired tale actually takes quite a backseat for most of the game's time, and when it does pop up it's not all that enthralling. But this is a better game to play through even with the janky 3D. This 2008 remastered version defaults to a new third person perspective instead of the game's original first-person and I much prefer playing in a more traditional 3rd person adventure view. I'm glad it was implemented, but it's not perfect. The option to switch between 3rd and 1st-person is there, and in several places it's essential to use both move around the environment. Again, the plot isn't told all that well and there's a lot that doesn't make sense (I assume due to the translation into English). Things happen without much explanation and the game seems to expect you to make huge leaps of deduction along with Holmes. I was fairly lost on what was going on and who was doing it by the end sections. Throw in some bafflingly difficult puzzles, made more difficult by an awkward interface, and you have a game that requires some dedication to get through. Yet the spirit of Sherlock Holmes is there and there's absolutely some fun to be had. I'm glad the game had a built in hint system because I sure needed it, even if it didn't provide quite enough help at times. I also encountered a horrible bug where the game wouldn't let me save in the final 2 hours which soured the experience.
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