Rating
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Crimes & Punishments lets you become the greatest detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes! Solve six high-profile, gripping and varied cases: murders, disappearances, spectacular thefts and sensational cases will sometimes take you to the realms of the fantastic in this stunning game of investigation in the fine tradition of the Conan Doyle novels. ...
Details
- Released
- September 28, 2014
- Developer
- Frogwares
- Genres
- Action · Puzzle · Adventure · Open world
- Publisher
- Maximum Games, Focus Entertainment
How it plays
Time to beat · 6 player times (IGDB)
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Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes has seen many iterations across many forms of media, and his legacy stands as one of the most infamous fictional charac
Crimes and Punishments is a game that is otherwise fantastic in nearly every aspect it devotes its time to. It’s a game that reminds us of how great Sherlock Holmes is, and why the character has endured for so long. But it’s also one that reminds us why Conan Doyle wanted to abandon the character. You can’t escape him. He’ll always decipher the clues, always find you, always see through the most perfectly planned murder. He marches ever onward, against the flow of time, holding on steadily. He’ll always be there, Watson in tow, ready to take the next case.
Sherlock Holmes often finds the proverbial smoking gun linked to a murder. In almost every case he takes on, he uncovers damning evidence that puts a killer behind bars. His proficiencies are all over the map, turning him into a super-sleuthing chameleon capable of becoming a shrewd interrogator, skilled scientist, master of disguise, untouchable combatant, undetectable thief, and any fantastical profession that leads to a miraculous case-breaking revelation.
Finding enough clues quickly will allow you to make an arrest pretty fast too, but it’s almost always the wrong choice. You’ll need to acquire most, if not all, of the clues in a case to make the right arrest. The issue with this system is that lots of the clues are super vague and seem like they could be paired with multiple other clues or with none at all. This leads to you pairing together clues and not feeling confident about it at all. Pair this with each case having multiple conclusions with only one right one I’d be surprised if most players got the right ending on their first try. Than...
Unlike the previous adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in Crimes & Punishments, you are not a mere spectator during the detective's investigation. It is now your turn to become Sherlock Holmes and lead your own investigations.
A confident reinvention, despite the obviously low budget.
Overall, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is good. It's intriguing and quite easy to get swept up in. There are always things to do, and before you know it, you've spent three hours in a timespan that felt more like one. Sure, the game has issues, but they're not impossible to overlook in favour of the more thought-through aspects. Crimes & Punishments is one of the better, if not the best, Sherlock games out there, and if that's not saying much to you, it's also one of the better investigation-style games. The balance and variation of gameplay should be applauded. The developers are de...
Even with that misstep, Crimes and Punishments is easy to recommend to fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation or adventure game fans just looking for something different. It may not provide much in the way of deductive challenge, but it succeeded more than any mystery game I've played in genuinely making me think.