The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes
It is amazing how much can be incorporated into a casual game.
It starts off with being invited to sign in by a pleasant voice that, unfortunately, I didn't hear again,
and an opening scenic of Bakers Street with a carriage passing.
Many of the scenes have an animation - flickering candles, balloons, lamps - a nice touch.
You select a case from a library of 16 different games - with interesting titles like The Zouch Emerald,
King Arthur's Arrow, The Porcelain Dragon, which involve scurrilous things like theft,
forgery, espionage, and murder.
Different settings can involve finding hidden objects, picking out the difference between two scenes,
remembering things about the suspects and eventually eliminating them one at a time leaving only the perpetrator.
Each mystery is timed, and if all the clues are not collected within the twenty-five minute time
limit - players are sent back to the beginning.
Each case involves about five sections and they all have to be solved within the time limit.
I would have liked it better if you didn't have to redo the parts already solved, but it's not too
bad since the settings are pretty much the same and the second time you can blast though.
The music is pleasantly of the period.
Finding objects is helped a lot with a magnifying glass which gets around the complaint that the object
was too small or too hidden.
Holmes and Watson appear giving summaries in what is the most grotesque lip sync I have ever seen.
Better they should have just kept their mouths shut.
There are hints available which take away from your score, which didn't concern me since I wasn't
playing for high score or leaderboard.
It's a pleasant, entertaining and non-boring game - I wouldn't go so far as to call it exciting.
Hybrid disk plays both Mac and PC.
Reviewed by: Editor - 07/08
Ages: Everyone +10
Fun Factor: A fully developed game
Female Factor: Holmes was a misogynist
Player Friendly: Having to go completely back to the beginning should have been avoided with intermediate saves.