Sadly to say this is an idea that probably looked good on paper but was undone by its own premise very early on. Set during the historical Ripper killings, Sherlock investigates the deaths of each of the canonical 5. The name given to the 5 victims police are certain were killed by the ripper. Given the historical nature of the Killings, you become aware that you are always going to be one step behind the killer and not be able to save any victims and of course the conclusions to the acutal identity of the killer is based on the acutal police suspects of the time. The game does make good use of the deduction board mechanic, but in this instance becomes a deduction on rails game. You can't really go wrong on this one at all. The game is then padded out with the usual pointless busy work and infuriating silly hard puzzles. One involves a bizarre moving block puzzle were Sherlock is trying to pry out a medallion from a floor board, which also has 2 planks, 2 bottles, 2 spoons, 1 comb, and a hand mirror to block progress - this had a 30 step solution to follow, and I had to google it. Puzzles were never Frogwares strength. No wonder then that they would go on to add a skip button to these puzzles in later entries. As an historical curio, it is superior to Nemesis as it tries to be a game of deduction not puzzle solving. Sadly its a case the Great Detective cannot really solve and feels very unsatisfactory in its conclusions.
Once again you don the deerstalker of the most famous of all consulting detectives. Set some time after the awakening, Sherlock Holmes receives a letter from the worlds most famous thief...no not raffles, but Arsene Lupin. This man has a real bee in his bonnet about England, and decides to take it down a notch or three. To this end, he will commit a number of crimes. Its up to Sherlock and his dependable companion Dr. Watson to stop him. Thats the premise at least. The reality is a series of linked silly hard puzzles, forming a really tedious obstacle course/scavenger hunt and of course everyones favourite "hunt the pixel" game. Arsene is of course taking the absolute micheal out of Sherlock and poor old sherlock is always one step behind. Which in itself is incredibly frustrating. For example, with the opening scene at a museum, the player is pretty much aware of who the villain is, and where he is hiding. But the game forces you to play Mr Lupins little clue hunt. Even when you are quite aware of his 2nd target, the game still forces you to play one of the most absurd clue hunts involving, taking down the dates of certain paintings and doing a little math to solve the riddle of where Lupin had been hiding, even though you already knew that. And then running around the museum and finding clues to point out what he was going for next, although the game had already hinted quite strongly at what that would be. No real sense of accomplishment or indeed any real sense of being a detective. Just a sense that you are a chump for playing Lupins game and annoyed that the game wouldn't let you short circuit this nonsense because you had figured this all out before you even began the clue hunt. You'd think this was the end, but sadly no. what you get as a reward is another riddle to another location. rinse & repeat. this is one to avoid frankly
This is pretty poor - the graphics glitched (at least I think it was a glitch) and I could barely see anything as the drow blended into the backgroud apart from their blond hair - as I was pursued through the burning town by disembodied flowing blond locks, I decided that this was a trip to nostalgia lane that should never have been taken.
Its way too old and way too clunky. Navigation is a matter of guess work as there doesn't seem to be a key to the navigation map ingame, you have to refer to the pdf manual and reference it through the game. Which is a tad tedious. The combat is way too fast on modern systems, so can be a real pain. There is a mod to the games exe. file to remove the need for combat. I wish I had played this back in the day on a current system. It looks like it would have been a good game. It appears to be fully voice acted by the original cast. Its also TOS trek and I always had a soft spot for that. shame really
Mouse controls absolutely shocking. No amount of tinkering can get this into anything remotely like playable
I heard a lot about this game. Maybe if I had come across it back in the day, it would not have gotten the score it now has. It is sadly unplayable. The controls are very clunky and for some reason mapped to the cursor keys. Although they can be remapped, you simply cannot get around how clumsy they feel during play. No matter how engaging the world is, it cannot mitigate how awful the control system is. Sometimes nostalgia is best left in the past.
There is a really good game here, but it is badly let down by some shonky mechanics and poor design choices. Cover mechanics are pretty much hit & miss as the npc goons have a almost supernatural ability to shoot through it at times. They are also far better shots than your mercs and seem to have better equipment - until they die of course and when you loot their bodies you find the goon who had been blazing away at you all day only had a knife on him. Your mercs seem to have it in for tree's bushes and walls. even if they are in close range to a goon, they seem more willing to blast the crap out of a nearby bush or tree trunk. This coupled with their poor accuracy led to so many reloads of gunfights, I once spent almost 30 mins loading a reloading a single round of combat - I really should not have to do that. The fog of war aspect to the game - can also be hugely frustrating when you use precious time chasing down that one enemy that has eluded you - and time is of the essence in this game. You can't afford to faff around in this world as being caught in enemy territory after dark is usually fatal for the entire team. In fact I would go as far as saying that the time element looms so large over the game, it can hamper your progress - spend to long in clearing out one sector, may mean not being able to take a key objective in another sector. This forces you to make the unpalatable decision of aborting that entire days mission and replaying it from scratch. Something I had to do on 4 occasions. In the end the sheer frustration of battling the games limitations and design choices along with the enemy mercs led me to conclude that there is a reason this game is not as strongly supported by the on-line community as JA2 is. The game is simply too basic. The tactical elements are fun as are the strategic elements of managing the teams and sectors you control. But that's not enough to overcome the weaknesses in other parts of the game. My advice to anyone who reads this, is to opt for JA2 instead - which is what I should have done myself.
