Отзывы Sherlock Holmes: The Silver Earring

After odd and forgettable "Mystery of the Mummy", Frogware games cooked a bit, and released Secret of the Silver Earring. And damn, despite game being old, it aged rather well, at least for me! To begin with, no patching is needed. At all. Sure, resolution might feel odd, but is probably necessary due to engine, and I got used to it quickly. Perspective and gameplay also changed, instead of that odd First person view, now it is more common to the genre "click to move character to ceratin position on the level", while you are watching from the side/top. It works well. Graphics are old, but not too bad, and music, while also being just some classics (afaik some music from Tchaikovsky and few other great composers was used?) fits well, and even gives some "nostalgic" feeling Regarding voice acting, gonna put a separate paragraph. In russian version, Mr Holmes is voiced by great Vasily Livanov, a person who played Sherlock Holmes in famous "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson" series USSR, widely known and loved at least in post USSR countries. And he does a good job at voice acting, contributing to atmosphere a lot. While Watson is not voiced by Vitaly Solomin (person who played him in series mentioned above), the characters are definitely made with those actors in mind. Regarding voice acting of other characters - ranges. Some are adequate, ground to earth, normal. Some are... overacting? In an odd way? As if it was a comedy or theatrical play of sorts. It is a bit odd, inconsistent. Also Inspector Lestrade falls into same category, he sounds as if he has sore throat, and it is a weird balance of speaking normally, no overreacting, and that weird... sore throat effect. Hard talk about english VA, but heard that it is done by actual british actors, sounds great to me Overall voice acting is nice, with few oddities. Also there are 2-3 moments when characters repeat their lines, probably forgot to cut incorrect/bad attempts, in one case Sherlock repeats his line three time, lel And now to the sweet part. Gameplay/story. It is an actual damn detective now, with rather believable story! Maybe a bit complex and some hints are a bit loose(not spoilers, but small hints ahead, better skip to next paragraph if you didn't play the game yet), like here - you have three culprits in the end of the story, one is rather easy to figure out, same about the second, but third is so obscure and hard to deduct, plus crucial hints to his identity appear only in the last chapter of the story! Anyway, there is actual detective work - collecting evidence, samples, checking footprints, recording data, analysing findings back at Baker Street. There are small fragments where you play as Watson too, usually interviewing people, or researching some areas by requrest of Mr. Holmes. By the end of each chapter there is a small "quiz" where you analyse your findings and have to answer certain questions, like "Were the doors locked that day?", where you answer positively or negatively, and have to support your answer with evidence In the end of the story you have an option to select culprits from the list of suspects yourself, and align them to specific murder/crime they did, which is really cool. And if you made a mistake, or didn't figure it our, don't worry, you still have access to ending cutscene (be aware, it is pretty damn long, apparently around 20 minutes), where Sherlock explains the case. It is cool, while you probably will solve a lot of things, you feel like actually reading Sherlock Holmes story, where he is the lead, he figures it all, and you are an assistant of sorts. The tone of the game overall is rather medium, not too grim and serious (mostly because of some situational voice acting goofs), but not overly stupid or comical, say, Lestrade is not shown as complete idiot like some adaptations like doing Two parts of the game might be difficult gameplay wise (one - sneaking past guard and his dog twice, quite an annoying moment. And second - going through maze in the woods, then rushing back and into the maze again while the clock is ticking). Chapter two is the one that has... three? Difficult puzzles that actually took some time, pen and paper. Only chapter with that kind of difficult puzzles not really related to case solving and deduction Overall, a great direction, definitely recommend trying it if you are not afraid of slightly old games, and like Sherlock Holmes stories. And I. personally, looking forward to playing next games in the series...