Originally released in 2014, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is the seventh installment in the successful series of games from the Ukrainian studio Frogwares, who in the last two decades have released a dozen games inspired by the stories of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle character, with the delivery that concerns us being the first to arrive on the Nintendo Switch.
(You can read the review of the last installment, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter Oneclicking here).
BOBBY JACKSON A BEAN
Crimes & Punishments puts us in the role of the mythical investigator -always accompanied by the faithful Dr. Watson, of course- throughout six cases full of murders, disappearances and mysterious cults, in which we must use our gifts of investigation and deduction to reconstruct the facts in the most correct way possible and unmask the person responsible (or responsible parties).
GAMEPLAY
The game is controlled like a classic graphic adventure, going through each crime scene and other places where our investigation takes us in search of clues, or collecting testimonies from witnesses, suspects and others involved. Sometimes we will have to solve some minigame to perform a scientific experiment, perform an autopsy or pick a lock, or even some QTEs (which are so 2014 that it hurts) during the action sequences. The quality of these minigames jumps wildly between mildly entertaining and absurdly tedious, which the developers themselves must have noticed because they can all be skipped at the touch of a button.
The six cases take us through a variety of locations, from dark alleys and seedy bars to Roman ruins and hidden temples. Each case took me approximately two hours to solve, giving the total game a pretty solid 10-12 hour duration, although this will of course depend on the experience of each player.
During our investigations we can form conclusions by connecting the clues that we collect, visually represented in a very interesting way as neurons activating inside our head. But beware, because sometimes we can draw the wrong conclusions, which can result in sending an innocent person to jail (or worse). At the end of each case we have the option to see if the conclusion we reached was the correct one, or even to replay the ending of the episode and see if we can reach a different one. It will be up to each one to decide if they want to try again, or if they live with our decisions. Although it is quite satisfying to arrive at the correct outcome, in some specific cases I got the impression that it was only possible to do so by taking a risk between two equally likely scenarios, because even reviewing the evidence I could not disprove one of the two. We can also decide whether the person we accuse of the crime should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law, or deserves acquittal of her crimes, perhaps for acting out of violent emotions or a victim of her circumstances. Unfortunately it is just a superficial choice, since it has no impact on the development of the story.
Being a post video game Arkham Asylum, Crime & Punishment has not just one, but two versions of the “detective vision” popularized by him. Pressing R we activate the “Sherlock vision” that allows us to find details in a scene that are normally invisible, while with L we activate our imagination to reconstruct scenes from the past or arrange the order of certain events chronologically. While their inclusion adds a bit of variety during investigations, the game always tells us when to use them, and outside of those times they have literally zero utility, making the option to activate them at any time feel superfluous.
The great star of the game is of course Sherlock Holmes, here represented in a rather dry and sarcastic way. He willing to pursue any theory to the limit or break the rules in pursuit of the truth, driven at every moment more by his curiosity than by any desire to do justice. The little vignettes of Holmes and Watson between each case left me wanting to see them interacting more during the gameplay, as Watson for the most part has nothing to do or even say in the cases. Of course, during our investigations we will also meet a variety of characters from different backgrounds and social strata that add color to the story. The only thing that made me raise my eyebrows a bit were some specific characters that I felt bordered on the line between stereotype and racial caricature, surely a product of imitating Doyle’s stories as closely as possible, and that perhaps it was not necessary to bring at the moment.
GRAPHICS, SOUND & PERFORMANCE
The Nintendo Switch port could be better. Graphically, the game continues to look good despite the passing of the years, both in docked and portable modes, although in the latter there is a very apparent aliasing. Performance is quite poor, taking a while to hit 30fps in some sequences. There are also several graphical glitches, including a rather annoying one in which the game seems to stop rendering the world the moment you turn your back on it, causing it to materialize in a brief white void when you rotate the camera. Then, expected things like texture streaming with delay, which is never going to stop being a problem with the Unreal Engine on Switch apparently.
But the worst part by far is the load times, which are long and plentiful throughout the gaming experience. Traveling between two places takes us about 30 seconds to load, which even elegantly disguised with images of Sherlock and Watson traveling by car to the destination quickly becomes tedious, especially when we have to travel several times in quick succession. One particular case required the nose of Toby, Sherlock’s trusty bloodhound, to follow a scent trail left by the possible culprits. This required:
-Open the map and select Sherlock’s house in Baker Street
-Watch a travel sequence longer than 20 seconds
-Talk to Toby at the house to let him know I needed his nose, which took about five seconds tops
-Open the map to reselect the crime scene
-See another travel sequence, longer than 30 seconds this time
To this are added other very long loading times. Is a cinematic coming? Long charge A 3 second QTE? Wait while the game takes over 20 seconds to load the sequence (which obviously has another load when you complete it). Whether due to technical limitations of the console or optimization problems of Frogwares, they are frankly inexcusable for a game already advanced in years like this.
The use of music during the game is quite sporadic, and basically there is no music during the gameplay except to accentuate specific moments, with most of our investigations happening in silence except for ambient sounds, or Sherlock -or some other character- contributing a comment on the situation. The voice performances are more than adequate, with Sherlock and Watson having by far the best performances, a good step above the rest of the cast.
There are many people within the gaming environment who feel that since the jump to HD the industry has been stuck, just iterating on the same types of games and the same mechanics over and over again. Games like this make me feel the opposite: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments It is a very good game, even brilliant at times, plagued by moments of unnecessary tedium, and whose shortcomings are accentuated even more due to how poorly some of its weakest aspects have aged in the years since its original release.