by Alan Au
Come Watson, the game is afoot! The famous duo is on the case in
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, this time squaring off against Cthulu worshippers in a first-person adventure game developed by Frogwares and recently published in North America by cdv.The Awakened tells a pretty good story, and does so with the help of a nicely rendered 3D environment. In a major step up from previous first-person adventure titles, players can now roam freely within the game world instead of being limited to fixed “stops” along the way. To accommodate this, objects and buildings are rendered as actual 3D models. The developers did a particularly good job of adding little details here and there, from Holmes’ violin to the various bits of debris scattered around on the streets of London.The sound effects and voice work in the game are fairly good. The sound effects are pretty much what you’d expect, whether you’re running around the London docks or exploring the tunnels beneath a Swiss mental asylum. The music, when it’s there, is appropriately menacing. The only real problem is that the music and ambient sounds tend to get repetitive after a while, as there simply isn’t enough. For the most part, the voice work is excellent and contributes to the overall audio experience.
I’m not entirely happy with the controls for this game. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by playing shooters with highly responsive controls, but the game was a bit sluggish on my rig. My hardware should be able to handle this with no problem, and the unresponsive controls became a bit of an annoyance. Still, it’s a big step up from previous pseudo-3D adventure games. Also, there’s no way to invert the mouse. Luckily this isn’t an action game, but it’s still one of those no-brainers that developers should know by now. Last but definitely not least, the hotspot recognition was a bit finicky, requiring me to be practically on top of an item or door to determine whether or not it was interactive. This led to a lot of trial-and-error poking around, not exactly the sort of thing you would expect from a master sleuth.Although the production values are pretty solid, the gameplay hasn’t improved to match the presentation values. The story itself is pretty compelling. I mean, who doesn’t love an old-time Cthulu tale? Most of the time it’s pretty clear what you need to do and where you need to go, but the thing that really kills this game is the return of the pixel-hunt. With all of the 3D environments and the nicely rendered details, it’s easy to miss a set of footprints or a scrap of paper that you need order to advance the story. The game won’t actually let you progress until you find every last clue. Although you can’t get stuck by missing an essential item, you can get stalled out indefinitely while you retrace your steps in search of that tiny clue you might have missed along the way. The other problem is that some objects don’t become interactive until you trigger some event. Even if you spot an item that looks useful, you have to wait until later to actually pick it up. The result is a game with an interesting story, except that you have to scour the entire environment for clues, and then continually re-examine it every time a new part of the story is revealed. This just kills the pacing in what would otherwise be a cool story about Sherlock Holmes vs. the cult of Cthulu.Value-wise, the game holds up okay but not great. The premise is solid, the story is engaging, and the puzzles are straightforward. The only downside is that it can become tedious hunting for that one last object you need to advance the plot. In the end, you can spend a lot of time playing, but only some of that time feels satisfying.On the one hand,
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a modern adventure game with upgraded production values and a compelling premise. On the other hand, it’s kind of a disappointment in terms of gameplay, relying heavily on pixel-hunting reminiscent of the bad old days of the early point-n-click adventure games. In the end, the story is great and the production values are pretty solid, but a lot of the game feels like work. Maybe ordinary detective work is like this, but it seems like a waste of ability for the great Sherlock Holmes.
