How much are you willing to buy into a game’s atmosphere and storytelling and let it do its thing? That is the central question for whether you will enjoy Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened because it is very much a game about Sherlock Holmes-ing around, solving crimes, and sometimes going bugfuck insane because there’s an element of the Cthulhu Mythos skulking around in the background. If you are down to spook and don’t mind the sometimes janky animations, the puzzles actually being pretty easy to solve, and the fact that, really, it’s not all that hard, then it’s a pretty good time. Also, it’s pretty impressive considering Frogwares is Ukranian and they were dealing with that whole “being invaded by Russia” thing while they were working on the game. It was also Kickstarted, so this is an actual Kickstarter that actually came out, a miracle of miracles.
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
Developer: Frogwares
Price: $40 USD
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with Steam code for review
The Awakened is a remake of Frogwares’ 2008 title of the same name (though it doesn’t require you to have played that) and puts the rationalist detective up against the madness of the nigh-incomprehensible gibbering horrors of the creatures beyond the stars and whatnot. This is also very early in the Holmes-Watson relationship as noted in my preview and they are simply very good friends and nothing else, you sicko perverts, so it is interesting from that perspective as well.
The storyline is a jaunt that starts off fairly simple and winds up bouncing from London to Switzerland to my very own hometown New Orleans, though you can spot more than a few re-used assets, which is why I said what I said in the opener. If you insist on a photorealistic reproduction of every locale, you will probably be very grouchy indeed. Likewise, if you want to be sold on the premise or, I don’t know, don’t enjoy doing a lot of puzzles and thinking about things, you will probably not have a good time.
The fun twist is given the nature of the whole Cthulhu and madness thing, the rationalist Holmes starts going a little bit bonkers, but otherwise, this is Frogwares doing Sherlock Holmes games the way they tend to do them. You rummage through your archives and think about clues and go “Hmmm! HMMM! Hmmm!” at your computer a lot.
I’m not going to reveal much of the story since that’s the entire point of playing this one, but while it’s fairly linear, it’s fun to see it unfold from a fairly mundane beginning to what becomes kind of bugfuck especially once we get into the whole cults and Lovecraft and mythos thing. So yes, there’s some animation jank, the world isn’t as open as some of their bigger budget titles, and it’s fairly short (about 10-12 hours), but if you like to actually keep a notebook at your computer and write things down like we did back when your choice of display was “green” or “amber”, you can forgive some of that. (It actually does a good job of compiling all its information in-game, but sometimes it’s easier to flip through a paper notebook and I’m also a dork that likes stationary and pens).
The Final Word
Frogwares really really likes doing Sherlock Holmes games and there is a deep affection for the characters woven throughout. This isn’t one of those titles where they slapped a license or big name on something they made anyway, which is why I’m being careful to draw such a distinct line. You are going to go into a Mind Palace and put together clues and think about things and that is pretty much what you are going to do, and if that sounds great, it’s a pretty good time.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
