I’ve had a weakness for adventure games since the dark ages of Zork and Planetfall. Computer games have come a long way, though I sometimes mess the simplicity of text adventures.
The Sherlock Holmes games have been fun, the puzzles occasionally impossible, and Sherlock’s usual comment of ‘It is simplicity itself.’ after a difficult task is a bit silly. The Testament of Sherlock Holmes follows the same general pattern of the other games in the series, but it seems a little easier to me.
We start off with Holmes and Watson sitting around 221B Baker Street when word of a grim murder comes in. The Police don’t ask for Holmes’ help but he decides to look into the case away. The game is afoot!
The graphics are good, the music nice, and the voice acting is superb. I played the PC version and couldn’t quite figure out how to use the different views, so I stayed in point and click mode. The game play was pretty straightforward and many of the puzzles were downright easy. This was likely due to the fact that a couple of the previous games were very complicated and difficult-especially the chemical works and the need to provide the names of suspects. Here Holmes only used his chemistry set a couple of times and the deductions were solved through the use of a deduction tree where multiple choices lead to the correct answer.
As with all adventure games one of the tricks is to try and think like the game writer. A couple of times there were solutions that weren’t as obvious as they might have been, but that’s alright, the whole point of this kind of game is to get the old gray cells working.
There were a number of program glitches. Each time a scene with a lot of moving elements came up, the images pixelated and turned into large blocks or chucks of random patterns. At one point Sherlock Holmes turned into two Sherlock Holmes, though you could only control one of them, they both stood around shifting on their feet and staring off into space. The game had to be restarted to fix the problem.
The problems were small though and didn’t greatly detract from the gameplay. I liked the Honors board where badges were awarded for various actions. It was also fun to play three different characters in the game. And, as always, it was fun to be around Holmes and Watson. The Testament of Sherlock Holmes was a fun game and I recommend it to anyone who likes adventure games.
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