Adventure Gamers - Forums

I found this game to be quite linear. The game leads you along and it’s basically just a case of clicking on everything, and exhausting all of the conversation options with everyone you meet. You are not allowed to make your own deductions, you have to wait until the game lets you. Here is a ficticious example (not in the game) that shows the kind of thing you will experience:

1) Someone has been stealing cats
2) A man says he hates cats and has no interest in them
3) You find “I love cats” magazine in his house, he has cat food in his cupboard, and you find he is a member of the cat lover’s club.
4) There is no option to challenge him about any of this.
5) You speak to his neighbour and she tells you “i’ve heard meowing from his house”
6) Only now can accuse him of liking cats and deduce that he may have been the cat thief.

Unfortunately I found myself sitting at a loading screen for a large proportion of my play time. As you are shuffled through the story of each case, you are sometimes required to travel to a location simply to pick up an item and bring it back. That is two loading screens worth of time just to do a chore that an NPC could have done instantly.

On your “clue” screen, you are invited to connect pieces of evidence together to make deductions. This seemed nice at first and I began to think about the clues, being careful to only make links that I thought were valid. However, If you click on two items that are not related, it simply tells you they don’t go together and marks them as such. So this aspect of the game can be reduced to simply clicking every clue on the list until you find a match. Where is the risk here and the chance to fail and affect the story?

One of the most promising but poorly implemented features of the game occurs during conversations. Sometimes you are invited to challenge the person with some relevant piece of evidence that contradicts them or confirms what you are saying. You are presented with a selection of options, one of which is “right”. If you dare to click the wrong piece of evidence, you are simply told “YOU PICKED THE WRONG ONE, TRY AGAIN” and the conversation resets so you can attempt to pick the right one. Again, you are not allowed to fail and must answer correctly before the guided tour continues.

The game looks pretty anyway and the audio is nice.I was going to say that this game would be good for someone who likes interactive stories. But I am not sure I would even say it is interactive. It is more like a story that is interrupted by loading screens and clicking on everything in sight.

Pity.

I had quite a bit of fun with it, myself. I was actually mostly disappointed the costume angle wasn’t utilized more.

Don’t think it’s anyway fair to cool it a “story interrupted by loading screens and clicking on everything”. You left out the lock puzzles.

No, but, really, I rather enjoyed all the cases and deliberately accusing the wrong suspects. Make Sherlock look like an ass. Fun.

Wael - 14 October 2014 02:51 AM

crabapple.

Do you know what means retail distribution? it leads to plan months in advance before release, not knowing if the game will be ready or not. You need to prepare marketing, you need to prepare finance for replicating units (8 USD per copy on console), you need to plan logistic, transportation and delivery, and you need to make deals with WALMART or SATURN or CARREFOUR, who are not the most reactive companies in history (E3 takes place in June for the end of the year deals, starting in September).
All of this is outside the game, it has nothing to do with it, it’s just what is required that you won’t say : “it’s the first time I heard about this game” or “I don’t know where to find it”.

releasing a game worldwide, on several platforms, requires a lot of organization.

So plan to release the DVD version a few months after releasing through Steam. Games nearly always have to be patched after release, so plan for the extra time. You can always leave a pre-order for the DVD version on Amazon with a prospective release date, and reason for delay. Releasing a DVD version that requires a lengthy download negates its only advantage.

Frogwares makes a patch that is distributed painlessly by steam.

It is not “painless” to have to wait several hours for a large patch to download on a slow connection. Avoiding that kind of thing is why people with low bandwidth look for physical versions of games.

Good job Frogwares. I admit you disappointed me with Testament of Sherlock Holmes, but really impressed me with Crimes & Punishments (after admittedly lowered expectations).

Aside from the minigames, this is light years ahead of Testament. Strong stories, and the focus on deduction is refreshing. My new rankings are:
1. The Awakened
2. vs Arsene Lupin
3. Crimes & Punishments
4. Silver Earring
5. Jack the Ripper
6. Testament
(have not played Mystery of the Mummy yet)

I think the thing to work on now is the character and personality of Sherlock and Watson. It’s not bad and there are some fine moments, but still too dour compared with the books and filmed versions.

I also have another complaint: why are there “save points”? In the previous games you could save whenever and wherever you liked. I can’t see how it is a forward step to replace that with “checkpoints” I have no control over. What if I’m halfway through a location and I want to go to sleep - I have to leave my computer on all night or lose 20 minutes of progress? I hope this issue is patched soon.

Tell that to all the people laid off from Codemasters, or the programmers who went down with the Amiga.

You’ll have to explain that for me.

 

Do you not know what happened to the Amiga, or do you just think it had nothing to do with piracy?

And if you think that stratospherically high piracy rates weren’t at least partly to blame, do you have anything whatsoever to back that up that claim that pirates were innocent? It’s kind of hard to make money on software that you don’t get paid for.

And if piracy wasn’t to blame, why do so many Amiga hobbyists admit, in hindsight, that they feel kinda guilty about wiping out their platform? (Not all, because people are good at rationalizing. But a significant number.)

Here’s a quote from someone who pirated heavily in the time:

Buying a computer is one thing, but not buying the software will always kill a platform. We were all guilty, and acting like you didn’t know it is deluded.

(Whole article is here: http://awesome.commodore.me/piracy-vs-the-amiga/)

Now, I’m seeing interesting economic arguments along the lines of “piracy doesn’t represent lost sales.” I agree that not every act of piracy represents a lost sale. But some inescapably must.

Here’s an analogy:

Bob decides to jump a turnstile to get on a subway without paying the fare. The subway is not crowded; when he gets on, that doesn’t stop other people from riding. Therefore, he reasons, his turnstile jumping does not represent a lost fare. After all, he didn’t stop anyone else from buying a ticket. And his fare wasn’t necessarily “lost,” because he could have walked or taken a bus. (Note: He would have cheated on the bus fare too, of course.)

Does Bob’s failure to pay represent a lost fare? And what will the consequences for the subway system be if a large number of people realize they can ride for free while other people pay to maintain the system?

And if people don’t respect the labor that goes into making a PC adventure game enough to pay for the damn thing… and they don’t have the “sales safety” of triple-A titles… how do you expect them to survive without switching to DRM models, etc, etc?

SPECIAL EDITIONS have limited niche appeal, DRM is apparently also off the table because it is worse than eating babies, so what’s left? Kickstarters for everyone? Tip jars?

I’m finally playing this now. Really impressed with the graphics and I love the idea of some of these new mechanisms, but my god did they screw up the execution. Why oh why can’t my favorite AG developers ever NOT drift in the direction of all-out linearity and increasing hand holding? None of them ever double down on challenge. Give me all the clues, including red herrings, and all the means to solve them and let ME piece them together. How hard is that? The deduction screen is such a great idea, it’s amazing how it somehow fails to deliver on the promise of solving it for yourself.

I’m also really over the ahh-factor of “difficult moral choices that affect the ending”. They do nothing anymore but annoy me. Maybe if they were subtly worked in, but it really doesn’t add any FUN to add these arbitrary moral choices. I just want to solve things, I want to see the ending. I don’t need 5 endings. It always ends up being obvious which choice you’re going to make, and then a tedious “collect them all” mission after if you’re interested in seeing the other endings. It’s just not a satisfying design trend of new games, but it’s sold as super intriguing, I wonder if anyone else feels that way.

RockNFknRoll - 07 January 2015 02:31 AM

I’m finally playing this now. Really impressed with the graphics and I love the idea of some of these new mechanisms, but my god did they screw up the execution. Why oh why can’t my favorite AG developers ever NOT drift in the direction of all-out linearity and increasing hand holding? None of them ever double down on challenge. Give me all the clues, including red herrings, and all the means to solve them and let ME piece them together. How hard is that? The deduction screen is such a great idea, it’s amazing how it somehow fails to deliver on the promise of solving it for yourself.

I’m also really over the ahh-factor of “difficult moral choices that affect the ending”. They do nothing anymore but annoy me. Maybe if they were subtly worked in, but it really doesn’t add any FUN to add these arbitrary moral choices. I just want to solve things, I want to see the ending. I don’t need 5 endings. It always ends up being obvious which choice you’re going to make, and then a tedious “collect them all” mission after if you’re interested in seeing the other endings. It’s just not a satisfying design trend of new games, but it’s sold as super intriguing, I wonder if anyone else feels that way.

What hand-holding are you talking about exactly? I liked the deductions but some of them were on the easy side. What I thought they could have done was keep the ‘join the dots’ style but without the red signposts that you get when you make an illogical deduction. I don’t know if that would have been possible while maintaining the explanations that you get along the way.

I normally hate multiple endings, but this game is one of the very few that I think does it right. The game is obviously meant to be based around the Dostoyevsky book, so the idea is to get you thinking about whether or not the criminals deserve to be punished. It’s a simple choice at the end of each chapter, and not a silly ‘sum of all your actions’ outcome. I thought it added something interesting.

diego - 07 January 2015 04:48 AM

Oscar - 07 January 2015 03:53 AM

What hand-holding are you talking about exactly?

Are you serious? http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/1478/P150/#72176

Well there’s that. Did you play the game? Inventory ‘puzzles’ like using the boot are a very small part of the game, there are maybe 3 or 4. But I’m not saying there isn’t handholding, I only wanted to know what RocknFnRoll was referring to.

Harald B - 07 January 2015 05:27 AM

As a system the new deduction system to me is easily their best one yet, but the way they’re using it needs some work.

Definitely. If they can just tweak it to up the difficulty, the next game could be great.

Oscar - 07 January 2015 03:53 AM

What hand-holding are you talking about exactly?

There’s too much to even list. The guy who responded to you nails some of it. Pretty much the whole game is hand-holding. Pressing “T” and “F” to focus and use your imagination is rendered 100% useless by the fact that it literally TELLS you when to press these buttons. You press T, and then Holmes literally finds and analyzes the screen FOR you. You press “F” and he literally imagines the scene for you, no imagining on your part allowed apparently. Again, this could be a slightly interesting idea, but at the very f’n least you need to allow ME to think and discover when and where to use these functions. I want to find the clues. I want to find the evidence. I want to sort out what they mean and why they’re relevant and decide who I want to talk to about them. The game does near 100% of that for you. Even the minigame puzzles where you’re putting stuff together is basically just a draw-by-numbers exercise.

I liked the deductions but some of them were on the easy side. What I thought they could have done was keep the ‘join the dots’ style but without the red signposts that you get when you make an illogical deduction. I don’t know if that would have been possible while maintaining the explanations that you get along the way.

It could be a great mechanism for using deductive logic in an AG. Like you said, it simply tells you when you’re wrong which defeats the purpose. It not only does it when you have conflicting conclusions (which I kinda don’t mind actually) but it also does it when you try and add together two clues to even create a node. That said, the deductions are probably the best part of the game, because at least I can use my sense a little bit as to what I think the real answer is.

I do miss the raw challenge of the older games like Arsene Lupin where it literally asked you a question and you had to type out the right answer. I was blown away when I came across that, it was the kind of brutal challenge I hadn’t seen since the 80s and I loved it. Zero hand-holding there. You had everything you needed, but you had to sort through it and decide what to do.

I normally hate multiple endings, but this game is one of the very few that I think does it right. The game is obviously meant to be based around the Dostoyevsky book, so the idea is to get you thinking about whether or not the criminals deserve to be punished. It’s a simple choice at the end of each chapter, and not a silly ‘sum of all your actions’ outcome. I thought it added something interesting.

That could be interesting, but I’m not always in the mood to be morally frustrated when I’m trying to escape into a game. Sometimes it’s just frustrating, and you always know the “good” answer probably leads to the best ending, so it’s self-defeating. Trying out the morally “bad” options is always just a curiosity thing. It’s not as if these games deeply explore the grey area the way they promise to. I don’t know, I’m glad it has been done, but at this point it’s getting to be a tired selling point. There is something to be said to just be the hero detective who solves the case, and that’s that. It’s fun to be satisfied.

RockNFknRoll - 07 January 2015 03:59 PM

I do miss the raw challenge of the older games like Arsene Lupin where it literally asked you a question and you had to type out the right answer. I was blown away when I came across that, it was the kind of brutal challenge I hadn’t seen since the 80s and I loved it. Zero hand-holding there. You had everything you needed, but you had to sort through it and decide what to do.

Yeah, but every game has had its faults so far, Nemesis included.

My perfect Sherlock Holmes game would have:
1. The overarching story and sense of adventure of The Awakened
2. The challenge and intrigue of Nemesis
3. The character detail and deduction of Crimes & Punishments
4. The personality, spirit and warmth of Silver Earring

What a game that would be!

I’d walk back my criticism a tiny bit just because as the game went on it got a little more tricky and I enjoyed it. Although I’m pretty sure a couple of the cases relied on you GUESSING. There were definitely some deductions that were not mutually exclusively true, and yet you had to just go with one. I thought maybe you had to count for evidence that the game left off of the deduction board, which would have defeated the point (although would be a better challenge), but even with that I can’t figure out how some of the solutions were the ONLY possible solution.

The game actually reminded me a lot of the CSI games. Definitely adventure-lite, but still somehow pulled me in. Coming from Frogwares though, it’s just a huge step down.