Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis (PC)

Take the most famous detective in literary history, add a first-person perspective, sprinkle on a generous helping of fiendish puzzles and accurately rendered London landmarks, before finally garnishing with a master thief intent on sullying Britain's honour.

These are the essential ingredients Frogwares has used to cook up its latest venture into the world of Sherlockiana. Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis is the latest in Frogwares' Holmes series of games, which started way back in 1998 with Mystery of the Mummy.

Thankfully, the games have got a lot better since that rather abortive offering. Silver Earring was reminiscent of the classic EA game (yes, EA) The Case of the Serrated Scalpel, while The Awakened introduced the first-person viewpoint that Nemesis uses.

Indeed, those who've played The Awakened will immediately feel at home with Nemesis. The interface is virtually identical, the immediate environs of Baker Street are the same and our two heroes are voiced by the same people who appeared in The Awakened.

Left-click interacts with the world, with the icon being context sensitive - i.e. if you can pick something up, it turns into a hand. If you can only examine it, it stays as an eye.

Right-click opens up the inventory, with the usual collection of dialogue, documents, items and articles to be pored over to glean clues. These will be vital to progression, so it is worth reading everything you collect. Certainly save you alt-tabbing out to the bookmarked walkthrough, anyway.

Graphically, the game is tidier than The Awakened, though it unfortunately has fewer slugs coming out of dead bodies. Locations are rendered quite nicely on the whole, although characters don't quite match up to the backdrops in terms of quality. Nevertheless, everything is still pleasantly done, on the whole.

Locations are generally expansive, with a lot to examine and inspect in your investigations. However, this leads me to one of my main gripes with the game. It is more of a personal issue than a genuine problem with the game, though.

What am I on about, you say? The locations can often appear lifeless due to an almost total lack of incidental characters. Essentially, a lot of places just don't have any people in them.

Now, I can understand the reasoning and, having spoken directly to the developers, they do make sense. However, the game would 'feel' a lot better if the streets were bustling with people. Baker Street certainly should be, I believe.

Of course, not everyone has a supercomputer and the developers are trying to reach the broadest possible audience with Nemesis. So it is fair enough that they cut corners to make sure the game looks as good as possible, while retaining good frame rates and so on.

Perhaps a sliding scale, a "number of pedestrians" option in the graphics settings would have been a viable solution? I just think back to games like Hitman: Blood Money and the Mardi Gras level and think how good Nemesis would be with even half the amount of characters.

Anyway, I digress (quite a lot). The core of any adventure game is its puzzles, coupled with an interesting story. Now, I have no problem with the story - legendary French gentleman-thief, Arsene Lupin, has challenged Holmes to stop him from besmirching England's honour, which he plans to do by stealing a number of treasured items from various famous locations around London.

What I do have a slight problem with is the obtuse and random introduction of logic puzzles into the game. For example, in one location you have to get into a lady's strong box.

I'm not a woman, so I can't say with complete accuracy whether this is common, but instead of having, say, a key to open it, do women usually have to solve ornate and complex puzzle systems in order to open their storage containers?

I don't mind solving an arcane riddle to open, say, an ancient tomb, but to open something that must be in use day after day? I don't buy it.

Anyway, this sort of thing is quite prevalent during the game and most people will be quite happy with it. I just think a bit more thought could have been put into the placement of such puzzles, to make them seem a little less arbitrary.

The last major issue I have with the game is that the voice acting is inconsistent. Sometimes it is acceptable, drawing you into the story, whereas at other times it is blackboard-scrapingly bad (the journalist that talks to Watson on a number of occasions springs to mind, in particular).

The Awakened had moments like this, but it was never as pronounced. Perhaps it is because Nemesis is primarily focused on London, so you get more cockney accents than usual. Anyway, some may feel this could be a significant hindrance to immersing themselves in the game.

Nemesis is an intriguing story told well, on occasion. Problems are usually cosmetic and Frogwares has its style down to a tee now, so there are very few glaring errors and game-breaking bugs.

However, there is still room for improvement. With a little more ambition, I suspect Frogwares could really hit the big time with its Holmes series. On a personal note, perhaps an Arsene Lupin game could also be on the cards.?

7/10

Robert Layton