Sherlock Holmes and The Devil's Daughter: So Jank.

Sherlock Holmes and The Devil's Daughter: So Jank. 

Title: Sherlock Homes: The Devil's Daughter

Release: June 10 (PC) - October 25th (PS4 XBONE) 2016 

Developer: Frogwares

Platforms: PC, PS4, XBONE 

I quite like Sherlock related things. That's all I've got, no follow-up, no joke, I just quite like it. I haven't read the books, but I have watched a few films, watched a few TV shows (even the less than great shows I.e. the Benedict cum-on-the-batch one) I've read a few stories, and I quite like Sherlock Holmes related things. But how was the game, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter. Wow, shortest intro I've ever written, I really don't have much to say. Least I'm not padding though, padding would be making it look like I've written more than I actually have. It'd be like non-content. Definitely not doing that though. Right; enough padding let's get on with it.  

Story (Spoilers) 

Let's get this out of the way, the plot is so sparse and when it does show its face it's nonsensical and just plain weird. The way the game works is basically you do a few cases then the plot happens then the game just kinda ends. The game is janky and the story definitely isn't exempt from that. Each case varies in quality there are some that are pretty alright and there are some, like the one with the actor, that I still have absolutely no clue as to what was actually happening. There's one case that really bugs me, the case involving an Aztec calendar is just all round stupid, there's robot things that throw spears there's a little person pretending to be a child but the part of the case that really bothers me is how Sherlock solves what had happened. Basically, years ago these dudes went on a trip and some Indiana Jones bollocks went down and they left one guy behind who they then assumed was dead and then started a club. I mean as it goes that doesn't sound like the worst plot for a case, right big boi? Well, it's not great either but the most annoying part is how Sherlock figures this out. He looks at a small model of an Aztec temple and he imagines it. Yup, that's it there's no 'here's why I think this' it's just him straight up imagining the whole thing. Plus, the Aztec temple is the most bullshit level, in terms of gameplay, of the whole game; oh yes, didn't I mention this level is filled with puzzles for some stupid because; again; he's just imagining it! Why is he making it harder? Why fill his imaginary temple full of traps when all he has to do is find out what happens the dudes! I'm gonna admit something that is probably quite obvious already, I remember very little about the individual cases and it hasn't been long since I've played this game, so I'll just leave that to show the memorability. But how's the overarching plot? Well, Sherlock has a daughter but it's from some dude he killed, who turns out to be Moriarty, then Sherlock has a neighbour who occasionally appears between cases and that’s it until the end. I actually like the ending section, it's weird and – again – nonsensical but I enjoyed how stupid it was even if it absolutely did not suit a Sherlock story. What happens is: Sherlock gets back, his daughter is gone, your neighbour is a Satanist who's stolen your daughter then you find out your neighbour took your daughter to the tomb of her dead dad – which actually has her dad sitting at a table; mummified. Which actually was creepy when I first saw it, then she gets possessed so she can find out where Moriarty is buried? So that your daughter can find the automated message from Moriarty that plays whenever someone enters the tomb and somehow, he knows his daughter is with Sherlock? Then she's on a burning boat you convince her to leave and the game ends. You know what? As I've thought about it the story is shit.  

The Rest of The Game Features 

I'm just going to group gameplay and presentation together because they don’t really amount to much and I don’t have much to say about them. The gameplay at its core is walk around and solve different puzzles and do mini games. There are a few reoccurring mini games like the lock picking but every puzzle can just be skipped by pressing a button, you can literally get to a puzzle and before you even have a chance to see what it is just skip it, I understand having a skip option for people who can't do a certain thing very well and there were times I used it because I was sitting wondering 'why the fuck is this here?' Or 'why is this going on so long?' I used the skip button on all but one puzzle in the Aztec temple because they were just the most trial and error bullshit since Russian roulette {dear reader, it has just occurred to me that Russian roulette is certainly not trial and error because if you fail at that game then I doubt you have much more to lose afterwards. My sincerest apologies}. The part of the skip button I don't understand is why it's available to use as soon as you get to a puzzle, why not have it so if you fail so many times it becomes available? If you use the skip button for every puzzle you've skipped like 90% of the game and we already know the story isn't all that worth it. Although, now I think about it even the puzzles are just filled with jank. The gameplay ideas that I actually like are the looking at details of a person and then figuring out what that means and the deduction map thing. The first is process where you can look at a person and select elements of a person and decide what those little details mean then when you have found all of them you can decide what it says about their character, then this can come up when you're talking to someone and they say a statement that's false and you can use evidence to contest what they just done said. The other gameplay feature I thought was interesting was the deduction map, mind palace? I don't know, what happens is you find clues which then go into the mind palace then you have to match a pair of clues then you use a part of the deduction map to draw your conclusions and depending how a conclusion is drawn shows how you think did the crime and then you decide if they do the time by deciding if you want to absolve them or prosecute them, what's really good about this system is that for cases after the first one, the first one is a tutorial and kind of boring, multiple people could be the murderer. However, when you finish the case it tells you if you got it right or not and if you got it wrong you can just go and change the ending so you got it right. I really wish it just made you live with your mistake and built from that.  

The game looks... alright, apart from the games dreadful first impression of a cutscene that looks absolutely disgusting with a framerate that can't even get close to touching 30, after that the game stutters occasionally and doesn't exactly look as high quality as a Blizzard trailer but it's not disgusting or at least not as disgusting as that opening cinematic. In terms of style it looks... Victorian; which is good. Sherlock looks as you'd think Sherlock would look and sound, although it weird how in between games they've made every single character look and sound completely different even though the games are apparently meant to be connected, I just find it so off putting. As something that's completely off topic I did find it very strange when I heard the useless Watson speak, oh yeah Watson is so useless in this game that when you don't play as him he doesn't actually have a walk animation; he just stands still and states the obvious, he spoke with a voice I recognised then I realised it was the guy who read the audiobook for 1984. If I had an Audible sponsorship I would have put it hear and it would have been so smooth. Plus; that's pretty much all I have to say about the game. It's a janky nonsensical mess, there are so many weird things that just don't make sense, I don't really remember the cases all that well but what I do distinctly remember was just the sense of fun I got from playing it and as I write this review and really think back I keep wondering, why?  

Having your dad in the room at all times when you sleep but also said dad is dead. And mummified/10  

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