I have played recent Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares. Thise one and Crimes and Punishments, are my favorites although both games are quite differnet in some respects. With this game the developers had quite a bit of courage and I commend them for that. Opinions may differ but for me they got a lot right with the new things they tried There is a combination of a main story which and additional side cases. The main story is also broken up in various parts. This makes it easy to focus on the case at hand and prevents becoming overwhelmed after putting the game away until the next day or a few days. One thing that could have helped is a bit more in-game introduction of the game mechanics. The game itself won't always point out how things work but there are very helpful explanations in one section of the settings menu. I very much recommend that you read them. It really pays off to understand these game mechanics early during the game! This is a bit of an "investment" and may feel a bit dry but you will be rewarded if you understand clearly how things work. I promise! The story is really well told in my opinion and moved me quite a bit. Sometimes the choices you have are not perfect but in the end it is great story telling and the conclusion of felt very appropriate and rewarding. The overall thrust of the story and how it is told are great and this is what matters to me in the end. The DLC cases and side cases are also a great addition. There were a few cases where the conclusions felt a bit too arbitrary because multiple alternative solutions seemed equally plausible. But the side make a fantastic addition and add a lot to the game and often add a lot of what made Crimes and Punishments so good. So I really recommend also getting the DLCs. The combat system is weird but it grew on me a lot and in fact I ended up enjoying it quite a bit after mastering it. Here again it pays off to read how the game mechanics work. Overall a great. Recommended!
I have played very few games that moved and hooked me as this one did. The story and the writing are great. There lots of really interesting and various characters with a complex and interesting background and great English voice actors. I could not wait to learn more about all the characters, their backgrounds, problems and in some cases their secrets. The story has several really good turns that work extremely well without seeming forced. The environment is rich and I find it really beautiful and fairly big for a game of this type. Some people complained about frame drops but on my laptop with 6 procesor cores (12 threads) and a GTX1050ti the game ran extremely smoothly with highest quality. Some people mentioned the facial animations. While those are not always perfect, I find that most of the time they are pretty good. And more importantly to me the faces themselves have a lot of character, expressiveness and variety. Overall this is really an outstanding game. It is really beyond me how a core team of three people was able to make this. A lot of work, thought and refinement has gone into this on all levels: story, playability, environment and character modelling, stability. I am utterly impressed and I am still quite moved by the whole game and the premise behind its story which only gets uncovered over t ime. If you like story-driven detective games, then I very much recommend this. Please make sure that you avoid any spoilers. The story is really good and you will lose a lot if you know ahead of time what will happen. It took me about 13 hours of play time to get all four endings and for what it offers the game is well worth its price. Luckily there is no significant repetition involved to get additional endings and if one lays the foundation for one ending then this will also often help with getting part of the things done that are needed for other endings. I hope that the team gets the success and recognition for this that they deserve.
The initial setting is just perfect and the game manages to establish the initial mood perfectly. The whole nostalgia that comes both from the time period in which the game plays and from references to popular culture and other games is fantastic although the game can be understood without picking up on any of this. Also, many of the initial puzzles are enjoyable and overall most of the puzzles are woven into the story in a very skillful way (considering the usual terrain of adventure games, mind you). One aspect that is a bit tricky is to know which of the characters can move on with their goals at which point in time. It is fantastic to have so many playable characters and the way how their story is interwoven is pretty masterful. But the problem is that many of the characters have certain agendas that they need to accomplish yet it is not possible to know whether these agendas can be accomplished at all at the current point in time. Often, an objective of one character that seems to be completely independent from what other characters are trying to do cannot be achieved because only if one completes the goal of another character then some side-item or additional location will become available that is required in a rather indirect way for completing the first character's goals. Probably this is just a result of the complexities of having so many playable characters at the same time and of a world that opens quite a bit during the middle of the game. Maybe there are others what will enjoy the game exactly because of this. Certainly it makes the game more challenging by making it less predictable and forces ot try many avenues at the same time. What I don't like so much is the heavy breakage of the fourth wall towards the end. Maybe for others this will be enjoyable but for me it is a bit of a cop-out that prevents and actual closure of the original story. Reminded me of the ending of Monkey Island 2, I guess old habits die hard... Still: good game! Recommended!
It's a nice and atmospheric game where most of the time is spent searching and combining clues. In some cases the clues are a bit too hidden or not 100% logical so I had to look at hints several times. But the game is very enjoyable and atmospheric so that this is forgiveable. And the 1996 high-tech that is being shown is also charming somehow - kind of like watching an old Mission Impossible movie but a bit more so. For me this was actually enjoyable as well rather than a turn-off. Overall I can very much recommend the game. There is probably nothing else quite like it.
The game is pretty nice even though it is also rather challenging. I recommend the game, it's fun to play and rather addictive. It is a shame, however that the import of custom music files is not working out of the box on all Linux distribuation. The game uses an external program for detecting the beat of the music but it is delivered in a form that required external libraries, not all of which are supplied together with the game. As a result, you may simply fall through the floor when you select a custom track. For some reason that they did not supply a standalone version of the beat-detection software that they use even though a version that can run without additional libraries already exists precompiled on the website of the respective project. For those looking for a workaround, you can download the essentia beat extractors and run them from the command line: - go to: http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/extractors_out_of_box.html - follow the link to the static binaries for the extractors (currently: http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/extractors/) - download the x86_64 - Package After extracting the package, do the following - copy streaming_beattracker_multifeature_mirex2013 into the folder game/data/custom_music of your game; you don't need anything else from the essentia package - place your custom .mp3 or .ogg files into the folder game/data/custom_music - for each file, run: streaming_beattracker_multifeature_mirex2013 <filename>.mp3 <filename>.mp3.txt this step can be done for everything in the folder by running: "find *.mp3 -exec ../../streaming_beattracker_multifeature_mirex2013 {} {}.txt ;" in the custom_music folder Good luck!
