Based on the same engine as SH: The Awakened, the mechanics are identical. Still no manual included, but it's not necessary this time, as the game does a much better job of introducing you to the controls and how to play. The subject matter is both fascinating and creepy, with the game drawing heavily on the factual background of what is known about the Whitechapel killings. The designers did a great job on portraying the seedy, rundown areas of 1888 London. While roaming the streets and alleys at night looking for leads and witnesses, I couldn't help feeling uneasy, with darkness lurking around every corner and filthy, desperate people lying in gutters, babbling incoherently. One aspect that drags this installment down is a number of tedious side-jobs you have to perform in order to progress the story, such as getting some cats to bother a woman in order to cause a distraction for the police. They're generally quite simple, and come off as filler between the game's more interesting parts. Which brings up the shining star of this title: the actual detective work and crime scene investigations. These aspects are quite simply, excellent. Analyzing the body and then using charts, timelines, and evidence in a graphical manner in order to organize the facts into something that explains what happened is surprisingly fun. The game ranks on the easy side of adventure difficulty. You can't die, you can't get yourself into unwinnable situations, and if you get stuck, all of the detective work and most of the puzzles can be solved with a brute-force approach of just trying all of the combinations. You'll never have more than a handful of items in your inventory at any given time, and never more than a handful of world objects on which you can use them on. In some cases, the game holds your hand entirely too much, and outright spoon-feeds you instructions on what to do next. You'll be playing this for the storyline and some casual puzzles to give your brain a light workout.
The Awakened is a fairly standard entry in the adventure genre. Inventory items can be combined and used on objects in the game world and there are a handful of single-screen puzzles such as the lock-picking game. Typically played in first-person perspective with WASD/mouse controls, you can switch between a 3rd person view at any time. I found the 3rd person view to be cumbersome, since the view angle was fixed and the screen would switch frequently as you moved around, sometimes making it confusing to figure out which direction you were now facing. The GOG version didn't come with any manual or instructions whatsoever, and it took me until near the half-way point in the game to realize that the space bar would highlight all of the objects on the screen that could be interacted with. This might seem like a bit of a cheat, but in a few cases it's nearly mandatory since the game demands precision on where you use certain objects. Also, you can't perform certain actions before the story line expects it. You will encounter some puzzles, the objects for the solution within your reach, but due to the game's linearity, don't become usable until you've completed other tasks first, which is confusing. No-win positions seem absent. You can't leave an area until you've investigated it completely. The puzzles are almost all logical and straightforward, though I got stuck a few times because I missed seeing a usable item (use the space bar!). Only once did I encounter a point where you could "lose" and have to reload a saved game immediately prior. The graphics are dated, but acceptable, with characters moving a bit stiffly. The voice acting for Holmes is decent, and okay-ish for Watson. Everyone else is fairly amateurish. Music is minimal, but atmospheric. Story line is interesting, and Holmes does his usual display of insightful deduction from mundane facts. Expert adventure gamers might not find much of interest here, but for the rest of us, it's worth a look.
