Tag: sherlock holmes

A Great Detective’s Beginning

On By kyndarisLeave a comment

I think I’ve said before that Sherlock Holmes is a character I greatly admire. Ever since reading about his adventures in a huge omnibus collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, I wanted to emulate the great detective in all things with a doctor companion by my side. The art of observation was something I attempted to train my younger self in by studying the fingers of a stranger or the scuffs on their shoes for just a hint of what it might tell me about their life.

Unfortunately, it’s not every day one stumbles on a murder. Second, it’s not like many a policeman would allow a random civilian to take part in their investigations. Life, it seems, is unlike the world of my many stories. A shame, really. I feel like I would have been an excellent sidekick to the great Sherlock Holmes.

Since my childhood dream is but an impossibility, playing as Sherlock Holmes in a series of video games has become the next best thing for someone like me.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One released in 2021 and was developed by Frogwares, a video game developer headquartered in Ukraine. Over the years, I’ve played many a game that they’ve churned out. While the quality is middling at best – given the studio straddles the line of indie developer and triple-A studio – there is something endearing about their games that keep me coming back for more. Jankiness be damned!

Chapter One is set in Sherlock’s younger years before he meets his erstwhile companion, Dr John Watson. While the game demonstrates that Sherlock has always had a special talent for deduction, there is an uncertainty to the character that we meet as he ponders the best way to utilise the truth. For example, one of the latter cases involved handing over incriminating evidence of a leading political leader of Cordona to better the lives of all African refugees. True, Sherlock could publish the information and see another corrupt politician fall, but doing so would not serve to benefit many an individual. Nor would it see restitution to the victim.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Chapter One centres on Sherlock visitng the island of Cordona, a fictional island that feels like it borrows elements from Cyprus and Malta’s history. Our not-quite-great detective arrives to visit his mother’s, Violet Holmes, grave. Upon immediately disembarking, he is embroiled in one mystery of another sparked by a challenge from his companion, Jon.

The Jon that stars in Chapter One is no doctor, however. Rather, he is Sherlock’s imaginary friend. Because of this, Frogwares is able to incorporate their janky gameplay for narrative purposes, such as the teleporting John Watson from the good old days, the vanishing and clipping of Jon as he fades in and out of existence, or the fact that he is able to walk up walls.

He’s not real to the people of Cordona and is a figment of Sherlock’s imagination.

This plays into the story of the game as well, culminating in a showdown as Sherlock reckons with a traumatic event from the past. While I didn’t like the choices that eventuated – agreeing with many people on Reddit that the logic Sherlock incorporated in his assessment of what had happened to his mother when he was ten was a little harsh – I did very much being given the opportunity to take a peek at a Sherlock before the one many of us fans see in his first novel appearance: A Study in Scarlet.

From a gameplay perspective, Chapter One incorporated many elements from the previous games including the mind palace and the connecting of clues to make deductions. Though 221b Baker Street didn’t exist, Sherlock was able to make use of the archives in the city of Cordona and seemingly carried a box of chemicals with him to deduce whatever strange fluid he stumbled upon. This streamlined a lot of the gameplay from older games and also made sense from a story narrative.

My main issue, of course, was failing to take into consideration elements of the environment or character writing/ behaviour when making my deductions to certain cases and allowing my own biases to shine through. For example, the very first case. I very much wanted it to be the prone-to-anger partner, who acted like a rich entitled arsehole.

Alas, it was the poor spirit medium.

The other cases didn’t have such clear cut culprits, with many open to interpretation. Fortunately, there were three major side quests that were able to fill the void left open by the need to have a very obvious antagonist – leading up to Sherlock wowing them with his deductive prowess before breaking down.

This added additional flavour to the island of Cordona, even as it worried me that so many murders or accidental manslaughter could be happening in and around the island.

Still, as a mystery nut, I very much appreciated how much of these cases Frogwares scattered throughout the game and probably would have preferred some more if I’m being perfectly honest.

Then, of course, there were the combat elements Frogwares included in their game. While previous titles didn’t have as much action sequences beyond a few quick-time action button presses, here, Sherlock was facing off against various thugs. Most of these involved stunning them by shooting at weakpoints (such as their hat or a molotov cocktail strapped to their back) before rushing forward to knock them out.

While these encounters added a little spice to the usual ‘go here’ and ‘search for clues’ aspect of the game, these elements did also become quite repetitive due to how little these elements changed from encounter to encounter.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Chapter One much more than I did Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong solely because of how open the game world was and how much it tickled the itch I had to deduct the events of what happened. While I appreciated Jon’s commentary of my greatness, I was also aggrieved when certain things I did, which felt logical at the time, were gated by how the game wished for Sherlock to proceed with a certain clue or piece of information.

In the end, though Chapter One still made me feel like I knew what I was doing. And honestly, that’s probably the only real way to make a consulting detective of a modern-day 30 year-old woman who grew up reading tales of Victorian England and obsessing over the BBC version of Sherlock in the year of 2010, starring the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

Eliminating the Impossible

On By kyndarisLeave a comment

Ever since I watched the show Detective Conan, I’ve always wanted my sharp mind to the test and solve gruesome murders.That desire was only heightened by reading the adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous fictional character: Sherlock Holmes back in Year 8. The idea of emulating the greatest detective in the world was what drove me to study criminology and helped train my keen eye to the minutest detail. 

For a good long while, my one desire was to throw on a deerstalker cap, have a Stradivarius violin sitting in the back corner of my room  and exclaim: ‘The game is afoot!’ to a doctor friend. 

So when video games were released that encapsulated that feeling of being a master detective, as well as the Victorian setting of the time, I was hooked. Being able to deduce everything with just a quick glance and arrive at awesome conclusions? Yes, please!

Frogwares has come a long way in terms of their Sherlock Holmes titles. Many of the early titles were focused on one huge case that spanned the entirety of the hours spent on it. Holmes would traipse from one corner of London to the next in order to unravel the dastardly villain behind it all. That all changed with Crimes and Punishments where players could enjoy a myriad of shorter cases that allowed players to arrive at their own conclusions. So, eager to try my hand at actual crime solving instead of sitting on the couch and letting the playable character solve it all in several long drawn out cutscenes, I dusted off my PlayStation 4 Pro to enjoy a romp around London before I jumped into the much more open-world interpretation of my favourite detective in his younger years. 

Lo and behold: Sherlock Holmes and the Devil’s Daughter.

While I enjoyed the first three cases of the game, the latter ones felt much too rushed. Despite the strong opening, I was disappointed at how quickly the intrigue petered out. From a narrative standpoint, it was also disheartening to see how little the cases tied together. Yes, there was an overarching arch but the writers only touched upon it with small snippets rather than letting them breathe or have Kate (Moriarty’s daughter) be more involved rather than shunting her off to the sidelines.

It would have also helped if Holmes was more receptive to communicating with his adopted daughter instead of ignoring her wants and needs. For much of the game, he is constantly reminded by Watson that Kate deserves the truth. This also plays into the ending as well, which falters a little due to how little Holmes has interacted with Kate throughout the game. 

Still, the whole deduction business was very much in keeping with the great detective. The way he would file away certain clues and then make deductions in his mind palace was a sight to see. I also liked that the players had the options to select certain choices when it came to evidence. The most important aspect from the books was that preconceptions could colour or bias a deduction. Rather than come up with a hypothesis and pick and choose what evidence to neatly fit into it, it was far better to use the evidence to formulate the circumstances and motives.

Fittingly, the gameplay was primarily focused on solving cases although there were occasional diversions such as lawn bowling or navigating one’s way through a secret Mayan temple within the confines of Sherlock’s mind. While these had their own intriguing problems to solve, they were more or less a gimmick to provide something fresh and different to the formula that was mastered in the last game. 

My experience with the Devil’s Daughter was still, however, marred by the technical limitations of the platform. It was clear from the outset that the game wasn’t terribly optimised for consoles. There was quite a bit of screen tearing and suffering through long load times (after getting acquainted with much faster speeds on the PlayStation 5). Worse were the janky movements from Holmes to Watson and the inexplicable lack of instructions for new functions. While tutorials might have bogged down the pacing, they would have made certain puzzles a lot easier to deal with. 

As it always the case, the Sherlock Holmes titles from Frogwares are not triple-A games. That doesn’t mean, however, that they are not enjoyable. 

These grumbles aside, my time with Frogwares attempt at changing up the formula before heading back into the distant past, was still a detecting feast for my Sherlock loving heart. Here’s hoping Sherlock Holmes Chapter One will bring a breath of fresh air to the franchise whilst still balancing the a-ha moments with as much style as possible.