Posted on: April 27, 2011
Romulus
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 5
The Tondon Limes by Sherlock Holeums.
To avoid beating around the bush with this review, it is unfortunate that I can only describe ‘Sherlock Holmes - Secret of the Silver Earring’ as falling short in every capacity. The execution is weak, the pacing is off and the voice acting mediocre at best. This is without the horror of the confusing pixel hunts, terrible characterisation and atrocious interface. Yet there maybe one or two moments which are worth five minutes of your time as a diehard adventure game player. And that is whom I only recommend this game to; those who literally are scraping the bottom of the barrel. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but if you draw Sherlock Holmes up against even average titles from The Adventure Game Company, it pales in comparison. To go into greater detail, I’m going to use the ‘puzzles’ as examples. That is to say, I am using the term very loosely as this game contains two in total, all the rest are spot-the-item or use-this-with-this. It is a weak mechanic to expect the player to see a single pixel on the screen, and the selectable area of it being the size of a mouse cursor. This is exacerbated by the total lack of inventory item description. Holmes does not describe what you are holding when prompted and all the information goes into a badly organised, bloated inventory book where every conversation and object is listed. The means of clicking through these lists is laborious and dull and to make matters worse you are forced to use it to answer ‘quiz’ questions at intervals. These ‘quizzes’ remind me of tests a mean-spirited teacher would set a class who they felt were not paying enough attention in their lesson. As if the game knows of its own tedious nature, it forces you to trawl through old dialogue and apply different plot elements to ‘yes’ ‘no’ questions. Get them wrong and you cannot proceed and further. Realistically, to retain the thread of the story is so hard as it’s exceptionally easy to lose interest at any point. Sherlock Holmes - Secret of the Silver Earring drags you through its short and frustrating gaming experiences by proving long and easy to watch cut-scenes as breakers. This is literally its one saving grace, as they provide the content and interest you’d want from an adventure game. Unfortunately it just feels like ‘game’ sections of this story gets in the way of what would be a rather good forty minute Machinima. The last frustration is the interface and camera angles. The point of view often flips with an odd jarring sense which makes you lose your position and get confused as to the layout of the location you are in. Exits are often hidden simply because you’re not close enough to the edge of the screen, and Holmes or Watson sometimes do not even react to your instruction to move. This is coupled with jerking animations and sometimes even glitched visuals. If there is one last thing which might convince you to avoid this game, unless you simply cannot resist, is one of the main characters calls Sherlock Holmes ‘Hole-ums’ by overtly pronouncing the ‘l’ in his name. Speaking of the letter ‘l’, ‘The London Times’ within this game is called ‘The Limes’ - I kid you not. It is hilarious and terrible all at the same time. Avoid.
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