Graphics

The graphics for the game are reasonable for its time. For a mid 2008 game you would expect there to be a lack of blurs, blocky edges and static scenery. This game seems to avoid all of these. There is plenty of light and space to move around in, and shows 19th century London as being fairly accurate in regards to the way it was described in the books.

The PC I used to test this game was a relatively low spec machine, and I had no problems playing this game with most graphical options at the highest they would go. My setup is as follows:

One whole area (inside and outside of buildings) is all loaded when the game starts, so there are no loading times between different places. I think this makes game play more fun because gamers in general tend to lose interest quicker than most audiences, so dispelling the age old loading screen was a smart move on the part of the developers.

Sound

The audio detail in the game was pretty impressive; it is very simplistic but effective. The music relates to what kind of situation you are going through in the game and makes you think when you need to. The background noises bring the reality to the game e.g. bird noises and trees blowing. They set the scene effectively. There was however A LOT of dialogue used in just the beginning of the game. It seemed to need a lot of explaining of how to get the game going. Fair enough if people don’t know anything about Sherlock Holmes or 19th century detective work, but those people probably wouldn't buy this game in the first place; so it seems unnecessary.

The letter at the start was 6 pages long and took me a fair bit of time to read. This frustrated me while playing because I just wanted to DO something! There is also a lot of pointless conversation between Holmes and Watson that just seems to achieve nothing. However there is an element of comedy to the game where it’s quite clear that Holmes is the boss and Watson is his sidekick. For example just in the first scene, Holmes seems to be taking no notice of what Watson is saying, regardless of how helpful or insightful it is.

Subtitles are automatically switched on when I started playing. As a regular gamer, I find sometimes I see the first few cut scenes of games and miss out on a lot of the dialogue because I can’t understand what the characters are saying. The fact that the subtitles are automatically on was a great plan.