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Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games

Gord

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Feb 16, 2011
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Steam is running a sale including the Sherlock Holmes games. Just bought the Arsene Lupin game for 2,50.
All Frogware SH games (sans Testament) are available in a pack for 8,75 €, real bargain if you ask me.
 

GuybrushWilco

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Arsene Lupin (called Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis) here, is an excellent game :) great graphics and masterful puzzle design. I am seriously considering picking up The Awakened. Does anyone know if it's as good as Nemesis?
 

Gord

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Arsene Lupin (called Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis) here, is an excellent game :) great graphics and masterful puzzle design. I am seriously considering picking up The Awakened. Does anyone know if it's as good as Nemesis?

I didn't play Nemesis yet, obviously, but can reccommend Awakened.
It's not as good as JtR, imho, but offers a slightly higher difficulty - if you found JtR too easy. A few puzzles are a bit obscure though, or depend on pixel hunting.
With the remastered edition they brushed up the graphics a bit and introduced a hint system, that can offer incremental informations on puzzles. I.e. you don't directly get the solution (most of the time) but indeed just a small hint to nudge you towards the next step.
Story is quite nice - has a certain Lovecraftian undertone, without ever doing anything that couldn't be explained away by reason, so it fits with the character of SH stories.
 

GuybrushWilco

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Arsene Lupin (called Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis) here, is an excellent game :) great graphics and masterful puzzle design. I am seriously considering picking up The Awakened. Does anyone know if it's as good as Nemesis?

I didn't play Nemesis yet, obviously, but can reccommend Awakened.
It's not as good as JtR, imho, but offers a slightly higher difficulty - if you found JtR too easy. A few puzzles are a bit obscure though, or depend on pixel hunting.
With the remastered edition they brushed up the graphics a bit and introduced a hint system, that can offer incremental informations on puzzles. I.e. you don't directly get the solution (most of the time) but indeed just a small hint to nudge you towards the next step.
Story is quite nice - has a certain Lovecraftian undertone, without ever doing anything that couldn't be explained away by reason, so it fits with the character of SH stories.

Sounds cool, I'll defiantly be getting it, and I may grab Jack the Ripper while I'm at it! the only two Frogware Sherlock games I played were Mystery of the Mummy and Nemesis, which were at either end of the quality spectrum, with Mummy being not very good, and Nemesis being great. I did play their Journey to the Center of the Earth game ages ago, and I remember it was a decent adventure game.
 

Gord

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Well, the general Kodex Kritical Konsensus regarding quality of the games seems to be:
JtR>Awakened>Nemesis>Silver Earring>Mummy
If that's true for you as well, you made a good buy.
 
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Arsene Lupin (called Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis) here, is an excellent game :) great graphics and masterful puzzle design. I am seriously considering picking up The Awakened. Does anyone know if it's as good as Nemesis?

It depends on what you like about the games. Awakened is easier but I think the atmosphere and the story are superior. Personally Arsene Lupin was ruined for me because of the too fetch like quests especially the museums library part was annoying to me. Though that said the art gallery part is one of my favorite moments in these games.
You should definitely play Awakened though and also JtR if you haven't already.

One of the reason why I love JtR is because of the amazing atmosphere when you're just walking around in a foggy, dark Whitechapel.
How is the environment and atmosphere in Testament?

It's weird really. They tried in someways to emulate the atmosphere of the JtR but none of them rises to the same awesomness as JtR. There isn't just that foreboding feeling you got in JtR.
It's little bit brighter in general too (not necessarily a bad thing). There's also a sewer part that I suppose is meant to be tense moment but the effect is more or less "The fuck is this?".

What is the difference between normal and hard difficulty in Testament?

At least on a quick glance, not much. The puzzles seem to be exactly the same. All I can think of is that maybe the puzzles offer the skip button more quickly and the "holmes vision" sees farther, maybe.
 

Zed

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Alright, thanks shiteatingnippledick

I'll wait until I get lots of free time again and I'll start playing it. Heh, maybe even starting tomorrow evening.
 

Drakron

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May 19, 2005
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It's weird really. They tried in someways to emulate the atmosphere of the JtR but none of them rises to the same awesomness as JtR. There isn't just that foreboding feeling you got in JtR.
It's little bit brighter in general too (not necessarily a bad thing). There's also a sewer part that I suppose is meant to be tense moment but the effect is more or less "The fuck is this?".

I read in AdventureGames they hired a team of TV writers to give them advice, I believe that because there is a lot of things that DONT work.

First the fucking children ... why does the game not only starts with those little shits but also its interrupted at times by the little shits? Is this some bizare attempt to get the womenfolk to buy the game? they served no purpose besides being a reminder children are in fact rather annoying.

Then we had the whole attempt at trying to make Holmes perhaps being a "bad guy" ... I could get it if this was the first Sherlock Holmes games since there is nothing established but its not and worst, they keep referencing their other games, like Jack the Ripper so we already know that is bullshit, Watson is further made into a idiot since at the point were he should have washed the hands of the whole thing, that is when the Judge is killed by a explosion and we are lead to believe Holmes caused it ... he did not and its worst, he knew the Judge was a good guy so yep, Holmes allowed a innocent good man to die but instead GOES LOOKING FOR HIM and who the hell wrote this sure as hell did not knew when to stop because behold, we have Holmes acting as if he is a bad guy again ... all to setup that stupid suicide scene, oh and apparently the writer forgot the "Doctor" part of Watson since I dont believe he would not recognize that as being a trick, he served in Afghanistan as a doctor and the game ITSELF mentions that ... sure you can "rationalize" it as you want but Watson is NOT just Holmes idiot sidekick.

And last the fucking ending ... I mean, did someone given birth because why the FUCK we had Moriarty's daughter in this right at the end so Holmes could ... God, this game story ... no, its not like he married her (at least I hope not) but its like "and Holmes became a father and so became a balanced person", well FUCK YOU by reducing Sherlock Holmes to some angast teenager from Anime that at the end learns a valuable lesson and becomes a better person, you are a HACK WRITER ... this mist have come from those advisers, there is a reason why they are writing TV scripts you know.

Oh did I mentioned they killed Moriarty? this is now the only game they made with Moriarty as the main villain and I have to say, the basic plot is not bad but they added a ton of shit that just drags it down and I am not found of how they decided to portray Moriarty either.

And to end, the stupid death of the Bishops nephew that is just ... dumb, falling into molted steel because the dog is chasing a cat above ... real pinnacle of dark comedy.

I am going to say this is decline because their previous games were just much better, this plot is so absurd and borders into character assassination (Holmes motives to act in such a way are plain retarded) were the only good thing we can say is, it looks better that before ... thats it.
 
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I have missed the bit about TV writers in AG. That's explains a lot, thanks for the info.
And oh fuck, I completely forgot the children. My brain probably tried to stuff them in some dark corner. They had no connection to the story apart from the very very end and were just for that very boring "twist".
I don't know for sure but were the ending a reference to the Myrl Adler Norton: daughter of Sherlock Holmes? Otherwise I just don't see why the fuck they did do it. Someone who has read them should clear that up.

Agree on everything else you said too. I don't mind giving Sherlocks personality a different feel generally, I even enjoyed the first Downey Jr. SH movie even though it felt more like child's idea of a All-star Sherlock Holmes story. But raping a already established personality is just fucking retarded. Did they change the voice actor too? Seemed more rough than before and I though the earlier voice was almost a perfect Sherlock voice.
Watson was also changed as you said and was even more of a idiot than he so many times is in these kind of things. Watson was pretty intelligent for a normal person in SH world.
The bit about judge were definitely the dumbest thing and the point were I stopped caring for the game. Holmes basically sacrifices a judge and then Watson does jack shit about it even though he knows? The fuck. Holmes doesn't mind a occasional burglary to solve a crime but he isn't a "end justifies the means" type of guy.

I really doubt Moriarty is dead even if it seems conclusive injury because they seem to be somewhat tied to the original stories if we go by all the references. It would have been better for them to have a different villain though but apparently everything less than Moriarty is banned from SH stories these days.

Some of the references to the SH stories were weird too like inspector Baynes. In original SH story (Wisteria Lodge) he was a country inspector that was almost as good as Holmes and in someways actually trumped over Holmes in that story! Now it could have been speculated in some point in the story that he might have been a bad guy but in the end he wasn't. So I don't see why they used that name.
Some of the references I liked are for example how Watson flirted with the women and the Toby scene while little bit too long was still nice.

Definitely decline and it seems that they won't be stopping it for the next game if I can read correctly between the lines from what a apparent Frogware worker posted in AG.
 

Drakron

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I have missed the bit about TV writers in AG. That's explains a lot, thanks for the info.

I goofed, that was actually Secret Files 3 that was another disappointment.

Definitely decline and it seems that they won't be stopping it for the next game if I can read correctly between the lines from what a apparent Frogware worker posted in AG.

Lets hope console sales are so low it does not justify going multiplataform from the start or ever, also lets hope Kickstart helps adventure games to make the niche market not to easy to rank up sales by putting out about anything since there are so few releases.[/quote]
 
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Secret Files 3

Oh okay, they actually need some help on plot department. Secret files 2 was pretty much a mess.
Makes it more confusing how Frogware failed this ones plot so hard though.

Lets hope console sales are so low it does not justify going multiplataform from the start or ever, also lets hope Kickstart helps adventure games to make the niche market not to easy to rank up sales by putting out about anything since there are so few releases.

Well considering Jack the Ripper was also released on Xbox 360 and that this one is also on ps3 it seems that they do embrace the consoles. I'm not sure if the JtR was planned for the Xbox 360 from the start though.
Kickstarter is all kinds of exciting right now but I'm still waiting what will happen when the actual products start to roll in.

I really do think this will sell more than the other ones because it's easier and more of a eye catch for public in it's edginess.Though I read some reviews of this and they all seemed to say that the puzzles were far too hard and complaining about graphics.
So when the developers seem to be trying to make the franchise more popular and considering how decline this game was, I don't see them inclining too much from this if at all.
I'm still hopeful though like you. Even if some of the coming decline could be smelled from JtR I still think that they could deliver for the next game. This wasn't DA2 bad or anything.
 

Darth Roxor

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Word on the street reached me (thanks root :love: ) that those games are p. cool. And goodness gracious, they are.

Started with The Awakened, now moved to vs Arsene Lupin (just left the art gallery), Jack the Ripper is next in line.

There are so many cool things about these games so far. The protagonists are recreated well, Sherlock being smug as fuk, Watson a bit clueless and gullible, but both likeable, the puzzles are great because they are actual puzzles, instead of 'combine item x with y for maximum retardo effect', and they are LOGICAL (with some rare exceptions), unlike, say, Microids 'lul that one book in a bookshelf containing 100 books? ITS PUBLISHING DATE IS SIKRIT PASSWORD'. Figuring out some of the puzzles in The Awakened made me feel genuinely clever, like the coordinates on the map, or the Black Edelweiss one. They are also pretty monoclean all around, what with the great musix and themes (that art gallery!). Some neat-o humour and flavour every now and then, like the Poirot cameo or the hillbilly chase in New Orleans. Great stuff.

But above all, what I perhaps like the most are the regular type-in puzzles. This is something that's been missing in various games with puzzles since perhaps M&M5. : Darth Roxor seal of approval:
 

hoverdog

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I've been playing SH vs. the Ripper lately and it's quite good. I enjoy the logical puzzles without using any "cockroach on car to gain microphone" stuff, though they are too easy at times and most can be just done through rep. Also, the beginning was unfortunate with its fed-ex quests.
Absolutely love voice acting. Sherlock, Watson and even minor characters are gracefully voice-overed. Even a Jew shopkeeper has an appropriate accent.
The engine is decent if not spectacular. Being able to use FPP and standard area camera is a plus.
overall, a really good game. However my playthrough was interrupted when suddenly I lost the ability to save the game :x
 

Gord

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Feb 16, 2011
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So.

Is the testament any good?

I found the earlier game too devoid of life.


If your main issue was the "lifeless" gameworld (did you play Jack the Ripper, though?), I think you might be happy with the Testament.
I've not played it so far, although I'll probably buy it now as well, but from what I gathered from various reviews, they have greatly improved in scenery and graphics.

On the other hand, riddles seem to be often of lesser quality, as there are a lot of pointless mini-games (although they can be skipped after a certain amount of time has passed).
There also seem to be a few logical problems with the story, so overall I doubt that it surpasses the great JtR, or Awakened.
 

Elwro

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The Testament is very good indeed. I played with my fiancee and it took us more than 25 hours to complete! And it was never boring.
 

RK47

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i love the part where u control a dog.
 

RK47

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Sherlock Holmes vs Predator should be a seller.
 

Gord

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Feb 16, 2011
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Finally finished Testament of SH.

Not totally bad, but I prefer Awakened and JtR.

What I liked:
Presentation of the first 2/3 of the story made me indeed doubt Sherlocks character
Some nice riddles - esp. when you really play Holmes the detective and do deductions
The sets were often quite atmospheric and with a lot of details

What I didn't like:
Overall quality of puzzles seemed lower, compared to older titles (although they had their lows as well) not enough actual "detective work"
Some rather impractible/implausible solutions - in a few cases, had this been a real situation, there would have been a very straightforward solution, but of course you had to find the complicated intended one.
A few too many mini-game-like puzzles
Several things that required too much suspension of disbelief or were simply out of place, e.g.

the whole poison/Hans Schielmann thing, Sherlock faking his dead in front of Watson, but showing up conveniently ~15 minutes later, a fucking radar dish(!) - by comparison the dog-sequence was pretty tame, imho


I'd rate it about equally to Nemesis/Arsene Lupin.
That one had a better and more believable story and puzzles, but otoh overstayed its welcome a bit, while I didn't feel that way in ToSH.
As long as you can live with the rather implausible stuff, ToSH should be good for fans of the series. To new people I would suggest first playing JtR (atmosphere, story) or Awakened (for a greater challenge), however.
 

Redlands

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I finished The Secret of the Silver Earring, which I think is their second Sherlock game (someone correct me if I'm wrong). It's like night and day in comparison. It has its own share of problems, but it actually feels like a Sherlock Holmes game: you have to look for clues in a very Holmesian way (vs the puzzles in Mystery of the Mummy), and occasionally will not tell you what they mean, so you have to think about things for yourself. I really like the end-of-chapter quizzes: it forces you to pay attention to what's going on instead of just sleepclicking your way through the game.

Problems are:
  • You can miss something in the first chapter that you need in a later chapter, and missing it forces you to restart. It's the only instance of it in the game (so I guess it's a bug) but in any event you need to remember to pick up a photograph of a woman to avoid having this happen to you.
  • There are a couple of real-time spots that I found annoying, mostly because the engine wasn't really designed for them (I wouldn't have had a problem with them if they'd been tweaked or altered) and losing them literally meant getting a game over. In one, you have to avoid a guard and guard dog to break into a building. This one wasn't too bad, except you had to do it twice, had no real idea about what spots were safe or not, and because the engine would sometimes decide to not have Holmes run. The second was worse: time-navigating a maze, which would have been fine had the orientation of the screens been consistent and Holmes not tended to ignore clicks/walk instead of running.
  • The final quiz requires you to have figured something out, I may have just missed a clue in the story however, and it's an optional quiz that has no bearing on the game.
  • Some parts of the game are really awkwardly written, I'm guessing it's down to poor localization but you probably should get your English version done pretty well. There's also a baffling scene when Holmes goes to do detecting that you have to sit through that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.
  • It just feels boring and tedious. This may be down to the localization as well, but I didn't really care all that much for the story. And unfortunately they telegraphed the ending reveal for people with a reasonable familiarity with the genre, though this might have been done as a reference to an original text. (It definitely hearkened to something Agatha Christie had Poirot mention once in her books, which is pretty much the only reason I figured out who had done it as I'd given up on the story by then.)
I wouldn't not recommend it because it does a few things I liked, but there are better Sherlock games out there to play (Serrated Scalpel, for example) and I don't really feel any desire to replay it.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I finished The Secret of the Silver Earring, which I think is their second Sherlock game (someone correct me if I'm wrong). It's like night and day in comparison. It has its own share of problems, but it actually feels like a Sherlock Holmes game: you have to look for clues in a very Holmesian way (vs the puzzles in Mystery of the Mummy), and occasionally will not tell you what they mean, so you have to think about things for yourself. I really like the end-of-chapter quizzes: it forces you to pay attention to what's going on instead of just sleepclicking your way through the game.

Problems are:
  • You can miss something in the first chapter that you need in a later chapter, and missing it forces you to restart. It's the only instance of it in the game (so I guess it's a bug) but in any event you need to remember to pick up a photograph of a woman to avoid having this happen to you.
  • There are a couple of real-time spots that I found annoying, mostly because the engine wasn't really designed for them (I wouldn't have had a problem with them if they'd been tweaked or altered) and losing them literally meant getting a game over. In one, you have to avoid a guard and guard dog to break into a building. This one wasn't too bad, except you had to do it twice, had no real idea about what spots were safe or not, and because the engine would sometimes decide to not have Holmes run. The second was worse: time-navigating a maze, which would have been fine had the orientation of the screens been consistent and Holmes not tended to ignore clicks/walk instead of running.
  • The final quiz requires you to have figured something out, I may have just missed a clue in the story however, and it's an optional quiz that has no bearing on the game.
  • Some parts of the game are really awkwardly written, I'm guessing it's down to poor localization but you probably should get your English version done pretty well. There's also a baffling scene when Holmes goes to do detecting that you have to sit through that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.
  • It just feels boring and tedious. This may be down to the localization as well, but I didn't really care all that much for the story. And unfortunately they telegraphed the ending reveal for people with a reasonable familiarity with the genre, though this might have been done as a reference to an original text. (It definitely hearkened to something Agatha Christie had Poirot mention once in her books, which is pretty much the only reason I figured out who had done it as I'd given up on the story by then.)
I wouldn't not recommend it because it does a few things I liked, but there are better Sherlock games out there to play (Serrated Scalpel, for example) and I don't really feel any desire to replay it.

Just finished it too. Yeah, I don't think anybody could have actually figured out the full story and solved the final quiz on his own.

Is the detecting part you're referring to the murder of Simon Hunter? Yeah, they really didn't lead up to that very well.

Game definitely would have gone down a lot smoother if Sherlock's movements weren't so stiff.
 

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