Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened - Remastered Version
 

For all of you that suffers from motion sickness when playing 1st person adventure games, there's good news awaiting :)

This is taken from Play.com directly.

Furthermore, I've heard somewhere that Nemesis (Holmes versus Arsene Lupin) is also being worked on. How great is that? :D

Good News indeed.

Switching between viewpoints is very easy and useful in certain situations.

This would have been nice earlier. I've already got both games. I probably wouldn't buy them again. Sometimes they make me feel sick and sometimes they don't.

There are reasons why some of you play Adventure games and not FP games. haha, but I feel I'd take FP over Third person any day. A big reason I wish Dracula Origins had a FP realtime environment. :(

I'll reserve my impressions until through with the game, but as for now i gotta ask - anyone else too had a tough time with the clock puzzle? :crazy: :

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/612...aperpuzzle.jpg

I'm stuck at it for few days now :frusty:, but since i was craving for myst-like puzzles in previous years, i won't look up the solution that easily. :P

I DON'T want hints as for now (there are ones in the remastered edition in the UHS-like style) but a consolation, knowing that someone else also suffered as much. :D

I remember giving up quickly on that one. I have no patience for that sort of "guess the what the rules are" puzzles.

I've just re-read the solution, and it's utterly ridiculous. Good luck figuring that one out.

For me, the clock puzzle was relatively easy. :D

Instead, I got hung up by the code-breaking puzzle later in the game. I had a hunch about the pattern, but something about the arrangement threw me off. This was the only point in the game I needed to check UHS... :frusty: Boy, did I feel silly for missing the obvious. :shifty:

(Incidentally, I never played the Remastered version, only the original version of The Awakened. Even though I made Holmes run everywhere in first-person view, the way Watson always magically appeared standing still whenever I quickly stopped and turned around really creeped me out! :crazy:) The switching between first- and third-person perspective seemed to work well in SH vs. Jack the Ripper, though.

haha, yes, "Watson's teleport" is a legendary feature :D like it wasn't enough the game was already being creepy. They fixed it in the remastered version. :)

Still stuck with the clock. :shifty:

I have!

Who says games don't deserve a second chance? :D I abandoned Awakened few years ago because it hadn't much appealed to me, but now, in truth motivated with the Remastered Edition, i've managed to finish it and enjoyed it.

I was surprised to find that the story is much closer to a classic SH mystery than "Lupin" and "Jack the Ripper", even though one can assume that Cthulhu doesn't have its place in the Holmesian universe. Actually, it was still a detective mystery, occasionally breaking into horror and even comedy as a nice change of pace. I chuckled several times, like when Holmes and Watson are discussing things.

But what surprised me the most were the puzzles - Awakened might not be the hardest, smartest, most creative... but variety of obstacles is astounding - you have everything from inventory and logic puzzles, quizzes, to even a relaxing action chase. Though inventory puzzles are rudimentary (because we're not carrying that many objects), Myst-like problems are very well done, like opening the temple door or the notorious "clock" puzzle. I know there are mixed feelings on "quizzes", but i found them fascinating for the reason they make you feel like you're "the one" solving the mystery, and also get you more immersed into game world, because you'll need to go through all of your documents, dialogues... And Remastered Edition comes with a hints which are nicely done like UHS files.

It's not a perfect game - side characters are under-developed, some scenes and twists are not that convincing, 221B is a sterile place, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade are nowhere to be found, streets are empty and dull, Watson could use more of his remarks... but overall impression was above average. Design of locations is still nice, especially of those in New Orleans. Hot-spot feature helps a lot, even though 3rd person is for the most of the part useless. It's a shame vs Ripper was dumbed down compared to this, so i'm hoping things to improve with Testament.