Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

One of the first TurboGrafx-CD games was also one of the first Sega CD games on the market (a pack-in if you were an early Sega CD adopter). Sherlock Holmes mixes the old-fashioned mystery novel with a new "interactive movie-style" gameplay technique, with mixed results.

It's not that Sherlock Holmes is necessarily a bad game; in fact it's incredibly true to the classic books. This is not an action game, it's the type of game that requires you to do some thinking, put the clues together, and come to a conclusion. While you can read the newspaper and research written documents, most of this game takes place using full-motion video. You choose where you want to go on the map, and then watch Watson and Sherlock Holmes investigate. Most of the puzzle is talking to the right people in the right order.

Graphically the game is strong ... especially when compared to the TurboGrafx-CD version. Gone are the poorly synced-up voices. Gone are the horrendous load times. Gone are the ... well, everything else appears to be the same. However, to the uninitiated, this is quite a striking full-motion video game, all things considered.

The bulk of the problems arise when you consider that this really plays like a Choose Your Own Adventure without the fun or imagination (or ease of use). Even when you know who to talk to and when to confront them, the game really isn't fun to play or watch. It's not a good movie, even though the acting is high quality. How can the acting be good and the movie be unwatchable? That's just one of the many paradoxes in this game.

In the end it seems like Sherlock Holmes is a step backwards for videogames, and ultimately not a game that will attract even a niche following. These are short adventures with no reason for you to ever visit them again. It seems like only fans of the books are going to like this, and most of them have already lived these cases making this game useless for just about everybody.