Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper Review

Curse that Ripper and his snappy dress sense!

Take the greatest detective known to fiction and have him investigate one of history’s most famous unsolved crimes.  A great adventure game should come effortlessly, right?  Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that … elementary.

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Frogwares’ latest adventure offering Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper.  No, I hadn’t been hurtled a year back in time to when the game was actually released, more I was looking for a modern adventure game that hadn’t been brought to us via Telltale Games.

The premise is relatively simple:  Sherlock Holmes (rumoured pipe enthusiast and master of deduction) hears the news about the murder of a prostitute in Whitechapel, and decides to  “unofficially” assist the authorities in their investigations.  This lands him and his companion Dr. Watson right in the middle of the famous serial killings of Jack the Ripper.

See? Fiction and history are so easy to combine!

If you read about Jack the Ripper in school, then you’ll notice a whole cast of real life Ripper suspects crop up during Watson and Holmes’ investigation, although most of them are discredited as actual suspects quite quickly.  A few are most likely only mentioned to bolster the suspects board on the Baker Street wall (artist Walter Sickert, for example), but it’s nice to see that Frogwares had no qualms with setting up a host of era specific character for players to enjoy.

At it’s heart, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper is an adventure game, and (disappointingly) not a particularly inspiring one at that.  The adventure elements seem considerably dumbed down for a story relating to literature’s greatest detective and you can be sure that if you can pick an item up, it’s going to be used within the next 20 minutes.  Many items also begin trading-chains that reminded me of the very basic adventure games of the past.  Get magnet, use magnet to get hook, use hook to get note, read note to find key, use key to open lock, etc.

You'll need to cross-examine police witnesses along the way

Dialogue is equally idiot-proof.  You’re only prompted with conversation choices specifically relating to individual characters, and each of these conversations either leads to the answer you’re looking for or a new dialogue choice.  You’re not often spoilt for choice either, four Whitechapel residents you become acquainted with somehow know absolutely everything you’ll ever need to find out.

Where this game comes into it’s own, however, is it’s puzzle elements.  Even though the situations themselves seem kind of demeaning (Arthur Conan Doyle never penned Sherlock Holmes and the Mislabelled Filing System, for instance), the puzzles themselves are challenging and suitably logic based.  At each step along the way, Holmes also completes an investigation pin-board to establish elements like timelines and motives.  These can be a little obvious from time to time, but they encourage reviewing the facts at your disposal and keep you focused on where your investigations are taking you.

Holmes and Watson are both built as solid characters, obviously influenced more by Conan Doyle’s actual works than the stereotypical pipe-and-deerstalker Sherlock Holmes.  Watson makes a few references to Holmes’ other cases through the course of the game, all of which seem to slot quite nicely into the literature timeline.  Watson is married at the time of this game, for instance, which fits the novels’ account of his marriage in 1887 and death of his wife (ooh, spoilers!) around 1894.

Suffice to say that you won’t see Holmes bare-knuckle box anyone in slow motion at any point during this game.

The game shys away from actual blood and gore, but isn't afraid of cartoon violence

The game suffers from some horribly slow pacing at times, especially around the middle, an issue that is only compounded by the games rather odd control system.  The developers have given you the option to play in either 3rd person or 1st person mode, presumably in the interest of inspecting your environment in finer detail, but I ended up playing almost the entire game in first person because you could move slightly faster than the 3rd person’s leisurely stroll.  If you take too long in any given section the game blessfully moves your character up to jog, but for moments when you find yourself stumped in Whitechapel in the dead of night you’ll wonder exactly why Watson can’t get a fucking move on already.

Narrative-wise, the story is well written enough to keep the game interesting (despite the pacing), and thankfully doesn’t try to get too clever when it comes to the mystery either.  The game is structured so discovering the Ripper’s identity is truly something you’ve worked to discover, and not just a chance meeting in a prosthetic limb factory.

Overall Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper is probably showing it’s age at this point, but it’s still an entertaining play, and certainly not going to cost you much to acquire.  I played the Xbox 360 version, but unless you’re mad keen on acquiring achievements I’d probably suggest this is more of a PC tailored title.  If you are a budding achievement whore, however, this is probably one of the least difficult 1000GP you’ll ever unlock.

The Verdict:

Pros: Well written storyline that manages it’s mystery quite well.  Entertaining puzzles that are difficult, but solvable with a little thought.

Cons: You could probably cut out an hour from the play time if your character moved a little faster. No bullshit. Much of the adventure gameplay relies on item trading strings,  which ends up a little simple.

Overall: Although it’s got virtually no replay value, and both the audio and visual are nothing stellar, I just couldn’t help but enjoy this game.  It’s challenging, frequently humerous and an entertaining play. 2.5 out of 5 stars.