The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

the review doesn`t contain spoilers I am a fan of Holmes. I `ve read all the stories, seen most of the films, the old series with Jeremy Brett and the new with Cumberbatch. This game is a fun adventure with interesting puzzles and finding (not so) hidden things. but what sets it appart is how true it is to the original Sherlock Holmes. His modus operandi, his scientific way of thinking and his total disregard for social niceties. Sherlock Holmes is not a pleasant person to be around but he is interesting to watch. He is like a nerd scientist and he doesn`t care, its all about his work. This game really captures this, and the atmosphere of the time. All the adventure feels familiar to a Sherlock fan and it is like taking part to one of his famous mysteries. And of course there are references to many of them in the game from Irene Adler to Tobby the Dog and from the bullet holes on the wall to the Victoria Cross he was awarded. Hope the other titles of the company are as good as that

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are enduring literary characters. As such, everyone has his/her favourite version, whether it be Doyle’s original depictions or subsequent interpretations in print, film, television and video games. Given that, how well a SH book, film, TV show or video game is received is greatly dependent on the creators' interpretations. 'The Testament of Sherlock Holmes' is my first SH video game. Overall, I liked the interpretation of Holmes and Watson in 'Testament'. The voice acting and animations for Holmes and Watson were well done. The location designs of the game were also excellent. With textures and effects turned to high or maximum, 'Testament' was very good to look at. The story was not bad, though it dragged a bit near the end. From my research, it seemed like every Frogware SH game had its major flaws. For me, the biggest flaw in 'Testament' was the puzzles. For a SH game, I had high expectations in this area. Sadly, I found many puzzles to be arbitrary and contrived. How many puzzle boxes must I solve? Why did those boxes and safes have such complicated mechanisms? For game about a character who thrived on logic, its puzzle designs certainly lacked thereof at times. Plus, many puzzles lacked adequate instructions as to how to proceed, leading to much random clicking. Furthermore, at no point during the game did I feel like I was Holmes. While the deduction boards were fun, I didn't get to have Holmes' insight. The story was told from Watson's or an outsider's perspective. So when Holmes revealed the true villain of the mystery, I had no idea where it all came from. We gamers find out his thought processes after the fact, and have no part in conceiving his plans during the game. In the end, 'Testament' felt like an eclectic collection of puzzles packaged as a SH story. While it is a fine game, it fell short of my mid-high expectations. After this, I don't feel like playing another SH game right away. Maybe I'll try another later.

My daughter and I are "point n click" adventure fans. She's a huge Sherlock fan, reads all the books repeatedly. We own all of the Frogwares Sherlock games except devils daughter. This game is odd. If you can get past the rough flaws here and there it has an interesting premise with interesting twists. We both enjoyed it. Only major problem is we discovered tabbing out caused the system to hang for a long time. Which usually led to the game crashing. As long as we didn't tab out all was well. Frogwares is a small team with limited resources, catering to a small niche, people expecting "AAA" polish are fooling themselves. Take the hate with a grain of salt. -1 star for the tab crash issue.

With every new Holmes story a problem arises - how to create a mystery on the same par as the ones in the books. And this game having the first mystery presented here - a botched robbery, being perpetrated by a monkey who was trained in cutting glass using a diamond, it seems the game's creators knew they had no chance to reach Conan Doyle's level, so said why even bother. Hence trying to make us think Holmes is a criminal on the same level as Moriarty. Hardly believable. In fact, the Watson and Holmes of this game are the ones from the TV shows rather than the books. Watson is an imbecile whose sole job is to telegraph to you what you ought to do next, and Holmes is a constant ass who treats Watson as a subordinate. It's a popular depiction of the duo in TV and movies, but a depiction I hate - one that I feel ignores the books completely. But the real problem of this game isn't their depictions, but just how paint by numbers the whole affair is. You go around a room looking for hotspots, find the occasional puzzle, solve it and move on. You do get a few opportunities to use your deduction skills, but information is so lacking, it felt more like guesswork. Hence I couldn't be satisfied with having solved a mystery. There are puzzles to solve throughout the game - most of them superfluous, but some of them seem incredibly hard while some are laughingly easy. Either way they are extremely tedious. The puzzles seem there to beef up the game. Especially one puzzle where you have to collect clothes before being able to solve it. It's a puzzle Watson solves, which isn't surprising. All throughout the game you only control him solely to fetch some item for Holmes. The game also pushes Toby into the plot, and name drops Mrs. Hudson. Maybe the plot redeems itself at the end, but the game having crashed on me three times when I tried to save, forcing me to backtrack a lot, I don't have the patience to complete it. Especially since Testament puts graphics over gameplay.