Old-timey detective stories are the best-- just give me a body, a string of clues, and some shifty-eyed characters, and I’ll be there! Sadly, this genre doesn’t get enough love in the game world, and I’m not sure why. Many games are mechanically great but have a useless story shoved in, or are mainly a story with a game tacked on awkwardly. However, detective stories have interactivity built right in, with all that inspecting and shooting bad guys!
If you’re like me, and starved for sleuthing since finishing L.A. Noire, the latest Sherlock Holmes game, Crimes and Punishments, is amazing. In the game, you get to assume the role of Holmes himself, finding clues and interrogating suspects. The game is helpful in pointing out certain hidden pieces of the puzzle (since we can’t all be master investigators) with a “Sherlock vision” mode, bringing interesting anomalies to your attention. But this is fairly rare-- it’s up to you to find most of the cool stuff yourself.
The graphics for this game are beautiful and detailed, which gets used to great effect when interrogating people. You, as Holmes, notice everything from the buttons on sleeves to tired-looking eyes. Unlike L.A. Noire, where you’re always seconds away from awkwardly screaming at a suspect, interviews in this game are much more straightforward. The only time Holmes really jumps in is when someone says something especially suspicious-- a quick time button press, but one you can see coming if you’re paying attention.
The bits of evidence you gather gets stored in a deduction map, where you go into the mind of Holmes himself and piece together the parts that fit with each other. You can then guess as to what the parts mean: is the suspect responsible for it all, or is it merely a coincidence that he’s caught up in this mess? Once you’ve gathered up all the evidence, you can follow the deduction map to a conclusion.
The best part of this game?
Your conclusion could be totally wrong!
It’s up to you to actually be a good detective.
The best part of this game?
Your conclusion could be totally wrong!
It’s up to you to actually be a good detective.
This game has lots of great details, with gorgeous crime scenes (and not-so-gorgeous crimes), a dress-up Sherlock Holmes mechanic, Toby the dog, a mostly useless Watson, and plenty more Holmesian fun. There are some traditional adventure game puzzles, but you can skip them if you get too frustrated and just want to move on with the story. This game is available on most major systems, so find the machine with the best graphics renderer in your possession and get to solving some mysteries!
Talking to the dog at the beginning of every case,
The Dungeon Dame
The Dungeon Dame