Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
Developer: Frogwares
Price: $60 / $40 [PC]
Platform: PC, PS4, and Xbox One
A PS4 copy of Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments was supplied to us
It’s been two years since Frogwares’ last Sherlock Holmes game and since we won’t get the fourth season of Sherlock until 2016 I suppose this’ll have to do. It’s a good thing Crimes and Punishments is easily one of the best Sherlock games to date.
So you play as the famous detective solving various crimes, but I’m still pretty unsure on how I feel about how the plot is structured. Instead of guiding Sherlock through a series of murders that are connected and arresting the mastermind behind the crimes at the end, you’ll instead have six standalone cases. On one hand it does feel less grand that past games, but on the other I really dig the sort of episodic vibe. The cases are also really well written and the murders are far from dull. My main issue with how the story plays out though is that there’s nobody there to give any sort of back and forth with Holmes. He walks into an area, says what he thinks in his usual smug way, and everyone just nods their head in agreement. Sherlock never has a proper conversation with anyone, not even Watson who just follows him around dumbfounded about everything.
Being an adventure game, the bulk of your time with Mr. Holmes is combing through a crime scene looking for clues. You’ll examine dead bodies, collect samples that then need to be analyzed back at your apartment, or sift through newspaper clippings looking for the connection to your suspect. The game also helpfully lets you know which clues in your inventory can be used in an interrogation with a suspect or further analyzed. Of course this wouldn’t be a Sherlock Holmes game if there weren’t puzzles to solve. You’ll go through each case carefully searching the environment for clues and you’ll occasionally get a puzzle to solve. Some of these are really neat and challenging, while others get really repetitive and are insultingly easy. Crimes and Punishments also spices up the slow pace of the game with a few brief action sequences such as shooting or boxing segments pulled straight from the Robert Downey Jr. films. Just as in the previous game, if you’re finding a puzzle particularly difficult you can easily skip it without any consequence. I personally didn’t feel the need to skip many besides the annoying arm wrestling minigame and a few others; the puzzles are overall pretty solvable and shouldn’t leave your finger itching on the skip button.
Besides the puzzles you’ll spend your time interrogating suspects and this is easily my favorite part of the game. Part of the interrogation process is that you can analyze their body (once again, like the new Sherlock show and movie) for specific features like a telegram letter sent that day or muddy shoes. It’s not a mind blowing feature, but it feels damn good to be able to catch a suspect in a lie by pointing out something you noticed on their person. You’ll also be able to find clues later on and come back to said person to call them out on their bullshit.
The biggest change to the series is the inclusion of moral decisions and being able to arrive at different conclusions to a case; each case has four or five conclusions you can reach but only one is the right one. As you go about your way through the game collecting clues you’ll go into a menu, visualized as synapses in Sherlock’s brain, where you can pair two clues together to form a deduction. Form enough of these and you’ll be able to come to a conclusion to a case and make an arrest. Deductions can also lead to two different ideas such as the creator of a recently vanished invention is either the victim in the crime or the person behind the disappearance in hopes of collecting the massive insurance check for the machinery. You’ll have to decide which leads are the right ones and then see how your choice unfolds when you accept your conclusion. When you’ve finally decided on your conclusion you then have the choice of condemning or absolving the suspect. The choices don’t affect the rest of the game in any meaningful way though besides receiving a letter from said suspect about your choice. I personally would’ve preferred if they axed this idea since it feels like it’s there just for the sake of it. Arresting the wrong person also has no affect on future cases and it would’ve been nice to see people like Lestrade or Watson begin to question you if you made a habit of wrongly convicting people.
Finding enough clues quickly will allow you to make an arrest pretty fast too, but it’s almost always the wrong choice. You’ll need to acquire most, if not all, of the clues in a case to make the right arrest. The issue with this system is that lots of the clues are super vague and seem like they could be paired with multiple other clues or with none at all. This leads to you pairing together clues and not feeling confident about it at all. Pair this with each case having multiple conclusions with only one right one I’d be surprised if most players got the right ending on their first try. Thankfully you can replay the ending segment if you want to redo your choices.
The Final Word
Crimes and Punishments is a great adventure game that’s unfortunately plagued with iffy clues, an unrealized morality system, and puzzles that that get a bit repetitive.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
