Review Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened Developer: Frogwares Publisher: Focus Home Interactive CDV Genre: Adventure Release Date: December 2006 Platform: Review by Ray Ivey November 14, 2007		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Sherlock Holmes is back, this time with villains straight out of H.P. Lovecraft. 

The mystery begins when a neighbor of Holmes’ has a servant go missing.  Normally this wouldn’t be such an exotic event, but tantalizing clues our detective finds at the site hint at something more exotic than a simple runaway.  With Watson’s help, Holmes begins to tug on the threads of the mystery, which leads them to on a global chase after a diabolical conspiracy.  Besides Holmes neighborhood, the game’s exploreable areas include the Thames docks, a sinister Swiss sanitarium, New Orleans and its adjacent swamps, and the wild coast of Scotland.

This is the first of the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games to feature a fully real-time rendered 3D environment.  The result is a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

On the downside, this being an adventure game, the graphics aren’t exactly cutting edge.  Character faces are fairly primitive, and object that should have weight and dimension flatten out completely when you look at them too closely.  The overall quality is about par with the 3D word presented in, say, Might and Magic VI (1998).

On the other hand, it’s really nice to be able to freely move around the streets of London.  The environments, both interior and exterior, have a fully-realized, colorful, theatrical feel to them that’s very pleasing.  In fact, “theatrical” really works better in a Sherlock Holmes story than “realistic” any day.  I also admired the fact that the entire area loads, so that there aren’t annoying loading screens when you transition from indoors to outdoors and vice versa.  In addition, pixel-hunting is greatly reduced because of the way the screen simply responds to you looking at something you’re supposed to look at (giving you an appropriate screen icon).  

The end result is a sort of charming dollhouse environment that’s quite pleasing to explore.

The New Orleans segment also looks pretty good.  The sanitarium isn’t bad, but the final section, in and around a lighthouse on the Scottish coast, is pretty basic.  It really feels like Frogwares had run out of money.

The story is pretty good, if very derivative of Lovecraft.  And because it’s Lovecraft, this is probably the goriest Sherlock Holmes adventure you’ve ever seen. 

You piece the mystery together with a variety of tools.  In the interface there’s a section to study documents collected during the investigation, as well as recorded conversations.  There’s a map feature that is very helpful for quick travel, and of course the inventory.  Also, there are times when you are able to use your magnifying glass to closely examine evidence such as footprints, blood splatters and the like.  You also spend a little time at Holmes’ chemical table analyzing evidence.  There’s a certain amount of fun to be had with these activities.

And it’s fun getting to investigate in several different areas.  Among the activities you will participate in to further your investigation are charming a raccoon, chasing a thief through New Orleans, coaxing information out of asylum lunatics, exploring a fabled (and creepy!) pirates’ cave, paddling through a scary swamp, and sweet talking a riverboat madam.

Sounds like fun, right?  And a lot of it is. 

But alas, the game is undermined at various turns by technical and artistic shortcomings.

A word about the inventory interface:  It sucks.  It’s awkward, slow, non-intuitive, and simply takes too many clicks to do simple tasks.  Adventure games have been around now for over twenty years.  Frogwares doesn’t really have an excuse to have such a clunky inventory system.

But the inventory system is heaven compared with the voice acting!  This game has the worst voice acting I’ve heard since the Tex Murphy games.  In fact, it’s so bad, I’m going to list the cast by name: Rick Simmonds, David Riley, Andy Hoyle, Andy Turvey, Bria Walker, Delia Corrie, John Bell and Miriam Millikin. This motley crew mispronounces words, makes hash of accents, is never convincing.  You wouldn’t believe how bad the New Orleans and Cajun accents are!  And the British accent of Sherlock himself is simply abominable.  Now I realize that this is a game from a European developer with offices in Ukraine, France and Ireland.  I understand that the game has to be localized in several languages.  But this is no excuse for the voice work in this game, which is simply unprofessional.

Frogwares would do well to study the work model of FunCom.  When their Ragnar Tornquist is the project director on a game (such as The Longest Journey or Dreamfall), he HIMSELF is the director of the voice acting in the game.  And it shows.

Ironically, the rest of the game’s sound design is quite solid.  Ambient sound effects are consistently atmospheric and effective and help draw you into the story and the varied environments.

Back to the annoyances.  Another irritant in the game are the slippery controls.  The movement controls are theoretically customizable, but the game does a very bad job of remembering the changes you’ve made.  What’s worse, controls which should be toggle don’t work properly.  A prime example is the “run” command.  You can map a key to make your character always run (believe me, you’ll want to do this).  Alas, this setting doesn’t stick.  Every time you interact with something in the game, you have to re-select “run.”  This drove me crazy.

The inventory puzzles in the game are fairly logical, involving lots of combining of items.  The abstract puzzles aren’t much to write home about, however, as they aren’t particularly intuitive or entertaining. 

Final Grade: C (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Play: The Rose Tattoo (a KILLER Sherlock Holmes game) Watch: The Woman in White Read: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle or The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

System Requirements:

• OS: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium® III 1.3 GHz or higher
• Memory: 512 Mb RAM
• Video card: 64 Mb Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible
• Sound card: DirectX 9 compatible
• DVD-ROM: 4x DVD drive
• Hard drive: 3 Gb free space on the hard drive
• 100% Windows compatible keyboard and mouse

This review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link back to Just Adventure.