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Beauty and the Beast

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: October 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The beauty: This game has wonderful atmosphere; the water effects are stunning; the actors are good; the story is interesting

The beast: it is so linear it hurts; you can't go ahead and pick up something you know you are going to need; once I typed an answer using the spelling in the clues and it wasn't accepted

I don't mind spending a lot of time solving puzzles; but I do mind spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to tell the game what I want to do. Not that this is new. It was the same in the old text adventures where you were in a maze of twisty passages all alike. Deja vu.

Sherlock Holmes and the Old Ones

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: October 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

A typical adventure game where as Sherlock Holmes you must pick up various items to solve puzzles, and find clues by looking around the map and clicking on areas where an icon lights up. Like the Longest Journey or Dreamfall, the storyline is more important than gameplay in Sherlock Holmes the Awakened.

For most the game you play as Sherlock Holmes in the late 1890's. The game takes place after Holmes' "death" at the Reichbad Falls, and his later re-apperance. Your task as Holmes seems simple at first. Watson wants you to chat with a patient of his. The patient reveals that his Maori servant has run off and from there the chase is on!

The plot line is a bit complicated but begins to make sense as the game progresses. What is truly interesting is the Cthulhu element to the game! It is well done and suitably mysterious. People with no idea about Lovecraftian lore might in fact be totally baffled by some of the events in the game. For those who are well versed in the Old Ones, the story line is a particular treat with plenty of homages to Lovecraft.

Gameplay is smooth enough but has a few issues. Namley, there is no bobbing as you walk. Much like the old first person shooter games, motion sickness can occur. Most of the puzzles involving objects are easy enough, but at times you need to double back to areas and pick up items you weren't allowed to pick up before. It would have been nicer if the game spared you the doubling back because whenever one gets stuck in the game, they can't help but wonder..."Do I need to go back somewhere?" Usually the answer is "no", but not always. At one point during the game, Holmes has to chase after a thief. It is incredibly anti-climactic because as you chase him, little puzzles occur which slows you down and turns the chase into a slow speed pursuit. And alas a math puzzle shows up. Bravo if you can figure it out without consulting the mighty walkthrough online. The end of the game has a somewhat "rushed" feeling to it, as if the designers simply wanted to wrap things up and be done with it.

Graphics are fine but by no means superb. There are glitches near the end of the game which serve to make the climax a bit choppy. Additionally you need to read journals and books and the font size is quite small.

Sound is fine as well and the dialogue not completely terrible nor the voice acting that bad. Where it is bad, it is at least brief.

The game has a rating of M, and there is no real cause for it. There are some gory segments, but nothing so terrible as to rank a rating of M. Maybe I'm jus de-sensitized?

If you like Cthuhlu, and fear him as you should.... you'll enjoy the plotline of Sherlock Holmes the Awakened. If you like endless puzzles such as Myst, you'll find the game lacking. And if you just like a good mystery, well without Cthuhlu knowledge in your background, you might find yourself scratching your head from time to time.

I paid full price for the game, which I finished in less than a week. So, I overpaid. $25 I'd say would be a fair price, and thats only because I don't want to displease the Great Old Ones.

Sherlock Holmes meets Hostel

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My son bought this for me because I love mystery games. I think he was anticipating something like a creepy Nancy Drew-type game, but the Awakening goes way past creepy.
There are frequent and graphic scenes of torture, mutilation, dismemberment, murder and suicide. Granted, the graphics aren't good enough to make any of this truly frightening, but the ideas introduced turned my stomach a few times. Parts are just gruesome. Toss in alcoholism, prostitution and a passing reference from a madam about Holmes and Watson "giving each other a hand" and it's a game that lives up to its M rating.
Be prepared to work at this game. The puzzles aren't that difficult, but the linear play is infuriating. After spending a great deal of time searching every nook and cranny, you have to go back over the entire scene because you forgot to look at a footprint! It doesn't matter that you've seen four other prints, or that this particular print offers no new information--if you didn't "notice" it, you can't progress in the game.
The nit-picking often distracted me from the storyline. Perhaps this is why the game seemed more like unconnected scenes of gratuitous violence rather than a cohesive story to me. Still, now that I've finished the game and gone over the story details, I have to say that at least 80% of the gore is just that-gratuitous. Ditto with the adult themes.
Holmes and Watson are true to character and I found the acting rather good. It's a shame that they were put into such deplorable circumstances.

I loved this game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: February 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed this game. I am a frequent PC game player and I can say that this is at the top of my list.

The puzzles were not obscure and nonsensical like many games. I used what I learned from the game and didn't have to rely heavily on "cheat sights" like I have with other games to solve the puzzles.

One glitch is that you have to move just right to go some places.

I really enjoyed the eerie atmosphere and the gore. The graphics are great and the story is easy to follow. Great locations. Quick moving. I recommend this highly if you love a good spooky mystery.

Painfully Linear

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed the Lovecratian themes within the story, and thought the voice acting of Watson and Holmes were great (indeed), but as previous reviewers have commented, the game requires you travel such a narrow path that it's downright distracting, even maddening at times. Pixel hunting, I've heard some call it... I enjoy puzzle games, but I don't enjoy having to figure out how to work the game as whole as a puzzle. Others in this set have commented on this lacking better than me.

It wasn't as fightening or off-putting as I thought it may be. It has an M rating, which is a borderline call, in my opinion. Drop a few of the dead bodies, and it could be a children's game, graphically.

Overall, the game was not that difficult, and had a great Nineteenth Century atmosphere. The creepy Lovecraft themed underworld that the duo uncover is really what compelled me to continue and finish the game. My dissatisfaction with the game is with the suffocatingly linear approach throughout the entire game-- I even had to start over once because I needed an item from a previous chapter and had saved over it... You'd think developers and programmers would be smarter than this by now.

Great concept, average result...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I will be the first to admit that I am a big fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos, so I was extremely please that these two worlds were to intersect in what looked to be an outstanding game.

Unfortunately, the expectation did not meet result, and we have a decent game, but not a great one. Linear play is not my favorite format, so unless you are drawn to it, you will likely share my experience.

If you are looking to check something out in a different venue of Sherlock Holmes or Holmes-like, I give the following my highest reccomendations:

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Granada Television Series (12 DVD)

The Crime Doctor

...check them out - you will be glad you did!

Halfway through it, you start to like it

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It takes a minute for your brain and eyes to adjust the movement in the game, but once they do it's pretty entertaining. The spirits of Watson and Holmes are perfectly captured and the puzzles are tough.

Painfully bad

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I played the previous Holmes adventure and really enjoyed myself. This one departs from the last in a number of ways. Firstly, it's in a FPS format, so the graphics are blocky and the animations jerky (why, why, why on a PC?!!!). I wasn't impressed with any of the graphics in this game. And of course, it's stomach churning. I'm confused why this type of interface is used, as there aren't any real actions scenes where such an interface MAY be useful (such as running around shooting monsters with unlimited ammo).

Second, the hot spots were a pain. You often can't tell where the hot spots are going to be located until you get very close and see the icon change. This ends up requiring sliding along a wall or staring at the ground while moving (some more nausea) & wasting time getting close to everything, just in case. You can't just enter a room and observe it to see what you want. You have to search it with a fine tooth comb. In real life, that kind of searching would be appropriate for a detective, but in the game, it's just a pain.

The game itself is painfully linear. I'm usually OK with some linear games if the story unfolds nicely and the game plays nice with me. This one was a head banging fight from start to finish. There were plenty of times I KNEW I needed an object, but wasn't allowed to pick it up. I had all the clues available to know I needed the object, but still I had to play through a whole bunch of other actions in the order it was written, then go back and re-do earlier actions to activate the item for pick up. This was terribly annoying and caused me great confusion more than once.
I was often stuck trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, rather than enjoy the environment and the story. Hints are nearly non-existent and they are desperately needed since it's so linear. Sometimes in the beginning Holmes will say what needs to be done (usually the obvious), but after that, there's nothing. If you want to find out the hint, you have to open the dialog section where all the dialogs you ever had are kept, and find the pertinent entry. You can't just turn to Watson who is trailing behind you every where and talk to him. He just says something stupid like "What now Holmes?" over and over again. I think the mark of a really bad game like this is when there is an official, extremely detailed walk through available. Nothing else. No hints, no one else's version of a walk through, just one. And even with that there were 2 sections I was stuck on trying to get the game to move forward.

Voice acting left me wanting, not that the inflection was so bad, most in fact were good. But Holmes sounds like a non-Brit actor trying to sound Brit. Some of the pronouncements made me cringe. Watson however was bang on. The actor had a very pleasant voice, very British, and was almost always able to get the mood right. He sounds the way I imagine Watson to sound.

The music was sub-par, especially considering the last game's beautiful classical music which matched so well to the story. Well, except for one happy piece near the end. I think they were going for scary, but it just came across as lazy and boring, so boring that I can't remember one motif, sound, or effect.

And now to the worst offense. This game is supposed to be atmospheric and scary. It's not even a little. The areas where you expect to find people are completely void of any life, which left the "scary" abandoned areas just like the rest of the game. There is some gore, but again it's so blocky as to be funny (the blood is always fire engine red). The expected "monster" never materializes, which I found to be the most egregious of offenses. Throughout the game are hints that there will be a monster, as well as idols of the beast (so that we already know what it looks like), but in the big ending, there was nothing. I'm tempted to pretend that they wanted to instill the idea that it was all a delusion on the bad guy's part, but it looked more like they just didn't feel like putting the effort into it. In fact, the whole thing feels that way.

At the end, Holmes sums up the whole game. It's as if the creators thought we were all too stupid to not remember the hours we wasted on this tripe. They were also kind enough to prime us for the next installment by mentioning a future evil whose face Holmes knows well. Well I wonder who/what that can be? It was such a ridiculous (and abrupt) 2 lines I actually laughed out loud.

Please, save your money on this one. I wish I could recommend someone buying it, as I really want to sell this junk, but I can't. Borrow it if you must, but don't waste both your time and money on this bomb.

Absolutely terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Graphics:
For an adventure game, the graphics are average and acceptable. The textures are good for the most part; however, some of the scenes are overly dark and appear washed out and bland.

Gameplay:
Painfully bad. The voice acting is stiff, unimaginative and absolutely annoying at several points. Hearing Sherlock Holmes's line "I have no reason to go over there" is the single most annoying line I've ever heard out of an adventure game. The characters are also flat and one-dimensional; the developers chose to be WAY TOO LITERAL in their take on the Sherlock Holmes storyline. If this character was derived back in the 1890's, it certainly shows in this game.

Controls:
Buggy. At times, the character will begin to drift aimlessly and one will have to hit the 'Esc' key and the directional keys to have him move in the proper direction.

Value:
This game should be no more than $15-$20 dollars MAX. If you paid more, you got screwed. Unless you enjoy hearing annoying dialogue, bland graphics, unresponsive, buggy controls and flat, boring characters, there's almost NO REPLAY ABILITY WHATSOEVER.

OVERALL:
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a boring, flat, tedious game with terrible dialogue, one-dimensional characters, and a buggy controls system hosting bland graphics. Stay away.

P.S. The Sherlock Holmes thing needs to be spruced up a bit. Time for he and Watson to get modern. I've never been so annoyed by a video game before playing this one. If you are seeking interesting, well-done adventure games, see Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight series under Sierra On-Line.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Once I figured out how to play the game I was able to get into it. I really enjoyed the graphics. It was suppose to be guesome but that didn't bother me because its just a game. You just follow the clues to solve the mystery.

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