Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meets H. P. Lovecraft is a great premise for any creative work. For an adventure/puzzle game where you play as the great detective, the effect is such that the mere conception of the idea makes me as giddy as a schoolgirl. So naturally, I was very excited when I saw the demo for Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo. I had heard a little about this game many months ago when it was first announced on several gaming news sites, but after the initial announcement there was no further information coming out so I had assumed that it was just an idea some developer had been tossing around. When I noticed that it was made by an indie development company and on a disc with other riveting titles such as The History Channel® Great Battles of Rome and Escape From Paradise City, I steeled my enthusiasm and prepared for the worst. I was not completely disappointed; the game was pretty good for an indie title. Still, it’s no Hotel Dusk or Myst either.



Graphics

I can’t fully comment on this one, as my computer is not capable of running this game at the highest settings, but from watching trailers online I have a good idea of what the game would look like if my computer wasn’t shit. The graphics aren’t revolutionary, they remind me of Half-Life 2 era graphics, but they don’t really need to be for this kind of game. Textures and models are mostly decent, although it’s apparent that they got lazy in certain areas such as the food on the plate Watson eats from: the egg breakfast texture is flat along the inside of the plate, making it look extremely unappetizing. The frame rate is very high for the most part; even when I cranked up the resolution and set the textures on the highest level this piece of shit computer averaged 75 fps. The minimum specs for this game are really quite low which is great for those of us who are stuck with old, low-end PCs.

Controls

The controls are a bit clunky in this game. I wasn’t expecting it to be as tight as a first-person shooter, but it would have been nice if it were a bit more responsive. One thing that was particularly annoying was the toggle run key. Every single time a conversation started, and often times when a clue was examined, your character would reset to walking speed; causing you to have to press the toggle run key after every conversation you had. Of course, you could also hold down shift, but who wants to hold down a run button for 5 minutes? A slider adjusting the sensitivity of the mouse would have been a nice addition as well, as it often takes a while to turn your character around. For certain types of evidence there will often be tools and other instruments that you use to find clues, such as a magnifying glass, which, while rudimentary it was still an enjoyable feature and kept the gameplay interesting.



Music

Not a lot to say on this one because there wasn’t a whole lot of music in the demo. It appears that the music in this game falls under two categories: On the one hand classical music, which enhances the 19th century London ambiance, and on the other ominous music befitting the Cthulhu mythos. While you are exploring London, however, no music is playing.

Gameplay

This game plays more like Hotel Dusk than Myst, although there seems (at least in the demo) to be a lot less dialogue and more evidence gathering. Also unlike Hotel Dusk, you are rarely given dialogue choices; the only exception in the demo was the very last “puzzle.” In fact, in general the game is very linear and doesn’t offer a lot in the way of choice. Invisible walls abound in London, restricting you to just a couple streets and a handful of places to visit. Clues are gathered by walking next to an area of interest and pressing the action button when examine icons appear. Areas that have clues that must be uncovered (such as the footprints, which allow you to examine the ground closer) will stop letting you examine them once all of the clues have been uncovered. In addition, sometimes you must further examine items that you have collected for more clues (for example, by applying a solvent to a particular clue to discover certain chemical properties it has). The game will not let you progress to the next area until you have examined all the clues and talked with everyone you need to. Items in your inventory, clues you have uncovered and conversations that you have had all appear in your inventory, along with maps that let you fast travel to areas you have already visited (despite the fact that sometimes those areas are only a block or two apart). From these you can usually determine what it is that you are missing and it will help prevent you from getting stuck.



Storyline

The story keeps true to the Sherlock Holmes short stories, and while it can’t be determined from the demo, I doubt that the Lovecraft elements are any less accurate. Like all of Sherlock Holmes’ cases, this one starts off innocently enough as the search for a missing servant. Holmes makes his famous uncanny deductions, to the surprise of all involved, and Watson plays the typical straight man foil. Minor characters have well written dialogue that supports their role in the story world; the newsboy, for example, speaks in a cockney accent and uses slang appropriate to that time and place. I only have one minor criticism of the storyline and that is that while the player controls Holmes and Watson at different points in the game, they have access to the dialogue and evidence uncovered from both; meaning that, for example, Holmes will be able to recall something that happened in Watson’s dream, despite the fact that he hasn’t told Holmes about it yet.



In conclusion, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a great game for what it is: a bargain-priced ($30) indie adventure game. It is not, however, a pinnacle of the genre, and could see a lot of improvement. If you’re interested in the game I recommend downloading the free demo first.
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