The Testament of Sherlock Holmes Review

Frogwares has had the #1 place to go if you want a Sherlock Holmes adventure game and while I’ve never gotten around to playing any of them (besides a bit of Jack the Ripper) I have heard good things so that lead to my interest in their latest game, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes.

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes
Developer: Frogwares
Price: $40
Platform: PC/PS3/Xbox 360 (reviewed)
An Xbox 360 copy of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes was supplied to us

Without getting into details of the story you’ll switch between John Watson and the master detective himself, Sherlock Holmes. What starts out as a simple murder quickly escalates into a conspiracy that has Sherlock taking a seemingly darker turn. And this game kicks things incredibly grim with your first real case being a murdered bishop who is brutally tortured. Unlike the previous games this game isn’t shy on the violent imagery with the mangled bodies shown right there for you to inspect. Something I particularly liked about the story is how suspicious Holmes becomes later in the story and how you even start to second guess everything he says because you can’t be sure if he’s had a hand in the crime or not. The story isn’t anything original, but it was still engaging enough to keep me playing to find out what happens next.

The game plays like your typical adventure game and considering the fact that you play as a detective and that this is the first in the series to be on both PS3 & Xbox I’m sure this is going to get some comparisons to LA Noire. I’ve already been asked by friends if it’s anything like that game and I’m firmly able to say “No”, with LA Noire being more focused on the detective aspects of gameplay and Sherlock Holmes focusing on puzzles and story instead. Like I said before, this plays like your typical adventure game so expect to walk around the entire area exhausting anything you can click on until you have everything you need to be able to start the area puzzle. An annoying thing that happens a few times though is that when you start the puzzle you’ll sometimes have to go back into the area to search through a whole new set of interactive objects to find something else you need; it really would have been better if you could just pick everything up right away then have to go back again. It’s not even like Holmes gets to a part where he specifically says he needs something, he’ll just say “I can’t do that” and it’s your job to select everything until you picked up the exact item you need.

The game itself controls decently enough, but you can get stuck in the door opening animation many times; if that does happen to you hit the B (360) or circle (PS3) button to cancel out of the animation. The game also lets you tap a trigger button to have a key item you need to progress the story with light up, but it’s never necessary. You can cycle through your inventory with ease and anything you need to combine together is done in the inventory screen. This menu is also where you’ll be able to switch between playing as Holmes or Watson (used very late in the game), read collected notes/dialog, and complete deduction boards. The puzzles themselves range from needing a bit of thought to being damn tough. There are a few puzzles that are simple enough with you just requiring a specific item and Holmes automatically using it (like finding a chemical to reveal ink on a paper) but the real meat of the game are the puzzles like having to put together an origami swan to discover a hidden bomb making guide. I did particularly enjoy the deduction board puzzles and really wished there were more than the three that are there.

It’s pretty disappointing that the game isn’t actually open world like the trailers claimed it to be. You’re given a map of London and you can only quick travel to maybe a dozen different locations, all of them incredibly small areas. The only one that has some notable size to it is Whitechapel and even then it’s only large for the sake of being large since the story keeps you in a very small area. Exploring does nothing for you since you’ll either meet an invisible wall or a dead end. I probably wouldn’t have minded much if it weren’t for the fact that I kept seeing it described as an open world detective game.

You can switch between a first-person or third-person camera but I highly recommend sticking to third-person. Interactive objects are much more easily seen when you’re in this view and since there are many objects in an area, some in hard to notice areas, you might miss them while in first-person view. The game itself took me around 10 hours to finish but will easily take you longer if you get stuck on a few puzzles. There are also difficulty levels and while some of the puzzles were already hard enough on normal I dread to think how much harder they are on the hardest difficulty.

There is one part of the game where you reach a mill (there will be three Russians) and when you play as Sherlock there’s a huge issue that I could find no fix for. When I enter the attic as Sherlock I immediately started checking out everything in the area I was in first, which included a loose wooden plank. I figured you needed to pry it open with your knife like in previous puzzles but to my surprise the knife broke. I paid it no attention until I got to the part where you need a cog underneath some sacks and after spending half an hour walking around trying to figure out how to move the sacks (because Holmes apparently can’t just roll them off the cog) I looked online. I learned that I was supposed to slice those sacks with my knife so that I could move them and THEN I go break the knife on the wooden plank to further the story. Silly me, how foolish it was for me to think otherwise. Since this game has no autosave I had to reload a save from over an hour ago and replay that entire segment. I’d really like to see this patched somehow because it can be frustrating for that to happen to players and I don’t see how nobody caught that when the game was being tested.

The graphics look decent enough, but aren’t anything worth talking about; although the draw distance in the Whitechapel area is laughable. I found the voice acting for Sherlock to be fantastic and exactly how I would expect the character to speak while Watson’s voice was incredibly irritating. Everything that came out of his mouth was some sort of whiny remark in a high pitched cry and either complaining about Sherlock or marveling at his genius. The soundtrack was also particularly well done with the perfect amount of tension given to the tracks during certain moments in the game. Also, if there’s an award for the goofiest animated face in a game I’m nominating Watson; his laughable lip sync animation and constantly bugged out eyes had me laughing whenever he spoke.

The Final Word
The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is a solid adventure game with my main knocks against it being the length and price. There are just so many games of the same quality (if not better) for half the price. If you’re looking for a game to scratch your puzzle itch though and don’t mind dropping the $40 then you might want to give this game a look.

– MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair