Sherlock Holmes: Secret of the Silver Earring

* Subtitles are available for gameplay but not for the long intro video that sets everything up. Guessing they also aren't available at later videos. They are needed. * Wiggle the cursor around until it turns into a hand in some random part of the screen. Click it, Holmes walks to a door in a different part of the screen and goes through it. Want to go back through the same door? I bet you do. Don't know how you do, though. Wiggle the cursor around until you can accidentally find the hotspot for some other door, apparently. * Bizarre camera angle changes during the dialogue trees means I lose even more sense of where I am in this house I am trying to explore. * Boring dialogue trees. * Game opens up in non-primary monitor for some reason, and a number of the configurable settings don't appear to actually be configurable (like the resolution). May have been something fixable there but I don't think it is worth the effort of fixing; after looking at other game reviews, I think I've got the gist of the game.

There are endless issues with this game that did not exist in the version I had on disc many years ago. I could have forgiven the sprite errors, the adult voices from child characters, the odd use of english (that is neither correct for victorian english nor correct in modern terms) the magically growing characters that dont scale down as they walk away (leaving them taller than door frames in most rooms) the floating characters that are several feet off the floor and those that are visible through floors, and even the occasions when they walk through furniture and garden walls. I was briefly confused when I was forced to search for a key for a door that I had already opened, and when an open safe told me it was closed even as I was picking up the contents. But I have given up and uninstalled after trying to avoid a guard and a dog that are so far displaced from the position they are supposed to be on the birds eye view, that they walk OFF THE SCREEN and can still see me. Frustrating and disappointing considering how good some of the other Sherlock Holmes on GOG are.

First of all, this game works like a charm under Linux with wine (7.0.1 under Debian). The game will please any fan of Sherlock Holmes. The atmosphere is faithful, pleasant and beautiful. The game aged well IMO. If you enjoy murder parties, or if you stop just before the final revelations when you read a Sherlock Holmes novel to come back on all the details of the story and try to solve the mystery by yourself, this game is really for you. It alternates between phases of evidence seeking, where you explore places as in many adventure games. The evidence are usually visible on the screen and quite often you know what you're looking for. Occasionally you'll be a bit stuck and hover your cursor everywhere, waiting it to change but with a bit of thinking, this can be kept minimal. You're also talking to many characters. There's not much you can do here outside of exhausting the list of topics to discuss. Occasionally finding a piece of evidence or talking to another character will unblock more topics, but this is rather the exception. Then comes a phase of recapitulation: analysis of evidence and yes/no questions with supporting evidence. These usually easy to answer. You'll sometimes hesitate, so either you try multiple combinations or look for a walkthrough. But I'd say it's feasible easily without external help. There are 2 other unique phases: an infiltration sequence where you can be caught and a timed "labyrinth" where you have to find your way back quickly. It's important to save before these. You also want to save before the last (5th) day's questions as once you answer them, you don't have access to your clues anymore. You'll really need them if you want to answer by yourself the next (optional) set of questions which really consists in solving the case. That's where it's very difficult and it feels like reading a Sherlock Holmes. I spent 2 days of hard thinking and managed to get a few pieces of the grand scheme, but missed some important parts.

Usually, I try to give an accurate description of the games I review, but in this case, I feel like that would be a waste. The game is plain bad, with almost nothing to salvage. They managed to make a point and click adventure that controls poorly, that alone should disqualify this game completely. Holmes is really unresponsive, there are plenty of dead spots that when clicked won't produce movement, he gets stuck on anything that is on his path, he is very slow to turn and in most maps he won't run, so he is also slow to move in general. Let's not even talk about the inventory or the notes, because that's just sad. The story starts slowly, and then further slows down. You'll never be given all the info to figure out exactly what happened (although you can guess a lot even from the beginning). Holmes makes some really questionable guesses to make his point in the end, and the huge cast of super minor characters gets in the way of both enjoying the story, or keeping track of the events to try and figure out what happened. Some puzzles and interactions are trivial busywork, others are cryptic, and none are really particularly satisfying (even potentially okay ones are dragged on and turn into tedium). The voice acting is quite bad (I saw some people say it's good, and I just can't believe it), the music seems to be on a short loop, because it becomes grating fairly quickly. The 3D pre-rendered backgrounds are the best part of the presentation, accompanied by 3d models with okay details for the time, but rather stiff animations. I got several of the games from this series together, but I am starting to believe I got duped, and this is going to be a real waste of money.

This isn't meant to be just a point'n'click adventure game - the whole point is that you're meant to deduce what has happened in a rapidly convoluting series of murders. It's great for this - the quiz mechanic that others have decried is the mechanism for making sure you're following the plot and puzzling out the murders as you go. By the end I'd got a bit lost and a couple of fundamental details aren't clearly communicated by the game (I guess they would give the game away if they were) but the extent to which this is the case means that it loses a star for obfuscating just that little bit too much, but overall it's still an engaging, fun sequence to play and to puzzle out. I'd keep a walkthrough on hand as there are some parts where it's very difficult to know if you've collected everything or not (or, more precisely, what you have to do to ensure you have collected everything and can move on) but overall (and especially for the price!) this is a good value sleuthing treat.