Review Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened Developer: Frogwares Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Genre: Adventure Release Date: December 2006 Platform: Review by Robert Washburne February 20, 2007		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is the third Holmesian game from Frogwares. Before that came Mystery of the Mummy and The Case of the Silver Earring. Frogwares is a European developer with offices in France, Ireland and the Ukraine. 

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a cross-over horror/mystery story in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective tracks down a cult who is trying to resurrect H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu.  An interesting mix and not totally out of the question as the first Holmes book was published three years before Lovecraft was born and the last Holmes book was published only ten years before Lovecraft died.  So Holmes and Cthulhu were definitely contemporaries.  And this was not the fist time someone had brought them together.  Check out Neil Gaiman's parody, “A Study in Emerald.”

OK, so I did my homework.  What about the game?  It works quite well.  First and foremost it is a detective game where you must run around and find clues.  But it does touch on the macabre and has lots of blood and dismembered bodies. 

Authenticity

But is it Sherlock Holmes?  A good question since there is a large body of fans out there who know what a real Sherlock Holmes would look like.  And the answer is,,, not really.

It is not the Horror aspect which ruins things.  Indeed, anyone who has read Dickens or played Blackstone Chronicles knows that there was a lot of terror concealed behind Victorian doors.

The game gets a lot of things right about Sherlock Holmes, the detective.  He is aloof, self-centered and brilliant.  His look and voice acting are quite acceptable.

But London is all wrong.  Victorian London was dirty, cramped and crowded.  Frogwares' London is clean, spacious and empty.  The only dirt comes from the muddy foot prints which Holmes must occasionally follow.  This sanitization extends to Holmes' apartment on Baker Street.  Where is the Victorian clutter?  And where is the pouch of tobacco which should be resting in the Persian slipper?

So while the environment is fine for a good story in general, your average Baker Street Irregular would dismiss it as having nothing to do with the great detective.

Gameplay

The gameplay is quite good once you get used to the controls. My biggest problem was confusing this game with Uru Live which just opened on GameTap.  Both are 3D games and both use the left mouse button to move forward.  But Uru uses the right mouse button to look around while The Awakened lets you look around just by moving the mouse and uses the right mouse button to bring up the inventory.  Needless to say, I was constantly returning the inventory when I wanted to look around the room.  But until everybody uses the same graphics engine, these are the sort of inconsistencies we must put up with.

The story moved forward at an adequate pace with clues coming at regular intervals.  You almost always know what needs to be done next as someone will tell you (“Holmes, why don't you go buy a copy of the Strand and visit the Bookstore?”).  Of course, actually accomplishing these tasks might take the ingenuity of a Great Detective.

Puzzles are mostly inventory based with the occasional logic puzzle and the search-for-clues puzzle where you are given a close-up of an area and you must investigate it with magnifying glass and tape measure.  All the puzzles had reasonable solutions and were about medium in difficulty.

Hotspots are generous with the only issue being that you have to get close enough for them to appear.  But I never missed any.

Clues are not revealed until you find them.  That is, a hotspot may contain a clue, but you don't know until you click on it.  In the clue search close-ups, the hotspots are invisible and it is up to you to click on things which you think might be interesting.  You will be told when you are correct.  This stealthiness is balanced by Holmes not allowing you to leave an area until everything has been discovered.  So you won't miss anything.

Overall, I found the game enjoyable to play. My only frustration was not being able to follow my own deductions.  For example, I spent my first time at the Wharf looking around to see just what was there.  I noticed the Custom's Office.  So later in the game when I was told I had to go to the Custom's Office I went right there and saw a note hanging up.  But it was dead.  No hotspot to click on.  It wasn't until after I went to the Pub and asked directions to the Custom's Office that the clue activated and I could click on it. But I suppose being herded in this way is an acceptable price to pay for not being allowed to leave before you get everything you need.  That would be much more frustrating.

Graphics

The visuals are adequate for the game.  As you can see from the screen shots, everything looks nice, but has no great artistic merit.  The cobblestones may have a repeating pattern, but they are pretty cobblestones.

The people are rather stiff.  They move like marionettes and if they bend too much, clothes and other articles have a habit of vanishing into their bodies.  But they get the point across.

One nice touch was a bit of intelligence in the environment.  For example, you can open and close doors manually, but if the door noticed that you were too far away, it would close by itself.  People would be absorbed in some task or thought, but if you get close enough to them, they stop what they are doing and look up at you expectantly

Another nice touch is the Scene Change where a picture of your next location is gradually painted in sync with the progress meter.  I soon found out while taking screen shots that this effect is repeated each time you return to the game after <ALT><TAB>'ing out.  So you can repeat it as often as you like.

Audio

The sound was nice and the controls let you adjust voices, music and effects all separately.  The voice acting is quite good with only the occasional gaff which indicated the actor did not know the motivation for their line.  Nothing to wince at here.

Conclusion

This is a nicely done game.  The concept is fun and everything is well designed.  While it may not have the attention to detail needed to be a Real Sherlock Holmes story, it still plays well on its own.

Those who are only interested in Eye Candy or who are squeamish at the sight of blood should probably look elsewhere.  But those who like a good story and lots of inventory based puzzles should enjoy it.

System Requirements:

Minimum configuration:

• OS: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium® III 1.3 GHz or higher
• Memory: 512 Mb RAM
• Video card: 64 Mb Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible
• Sound card: DirectX 9 compatible
• DVD-ROM: 4x DVD drive
• Hard drive: 3 Gb free space on the hard drive
• 100% Windows compatible keyboard and mouse

Recommended configuration:

• OS: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium® III 2 GHz or higher
• Memory: 512 Mb RAM
• Video card: 128 Mb Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible
• Sound card: DirectX 9 compatible
• DVD-ROM: 4x DVD drive
• Hard drive: 3 Gb free space on the hard drive
• 100% Windows compatible keyboard and mouse

NOTE: This game includes anti-piracy technology which may conflict with some CD-RW, DVD-RW and virtual disk drives.