Sherlock Holmes The Awakened

I played up to the very end of this game, then decided not to finish because I ultimately didn't care much about seeing how the story ends. I snagged this on a 90% off sale, so I feel bad complaining too much, but I'll share my observations. First, it's a lovely game. The areas are very detailed and lifelike and as you can tell by my high playtime, I spent time walking around and taking in all of the little touches. The attention to crafting the areas was very much noticed and appreciated. However, other than that, I found myself getting frustrated each time I sat down to play. The investigation scenes become more of a pixel hunt than actually using puzzle-solving skills. The paranormal aspects of the story didn't seem to make much sense and seemed shoehorned into the whole thing. A more straightforward murder/cult mystery would have been better suiting. My biggest gripe, though, are the areas that are set in near total darkness, making traversing them unnecessarily tedious. I eventually put the game down for good in the almost-black cave maze in Chapter 8, when I realized that I just didn't care about the story to finish it ,even so close to the end. So.. go ahead and…

pros ✅ The intermixing of Cthulhu and Sherlock Holmes is quite inventive and innovative ✅ Lovecraftian/Holmesian hybrid plot—a dark, unpredictable tale of an arcane sect responsible for kidnappings, bloody murders, and dismemberments. You investigate a series of strange disappearances related to the Cthulhu Mythos as Sherlock and Watson in this supernatural mystery PCN, a remake of the 2006 classic ✅ There are plenty of atmospheric and different places, such as London, Switzerland, New Orleans, and Scotland ✅ you can freely move the game's 3D environments ✅ well-made cinematic cutscenes ✅ The game features well-designed, realistic, and detailed characters, along with good-looking, polished 3D graphics ✅ two playable characters (Holmes and Watson) ✅ creepy settings and atmosphere ✅ hard to solve but wide variety of puzzles ✅ there is a map for fast travel. ✅ lenghty adventure ✅ decent voice acting ✅ there are steam achievements and cards ✅ there is auto save cons ❌ The frustrating and annoying QTE sequences, especially the final sections at the top of the lighthouse, nearly caused me to rage quit and leave the game unfinished ❌ The gameplay and investigation mechanics are confusi…

Choosing the teal butthole as a throbber was an interesting choice but I am here for it

I enjoyed this game. It's my 3rd game from Frogwares (yes, 3rd one with a Lovecraftian story, because that's the boat I'm on right now [i]HAH NO PUN INTENDED I SWEAR[/i]), and I really had fun playing it. I love the graphics, the game mechanics - which are already a little familiar to me after playing [i]The Sinking City[/i] - and obviously, I like the overall vibe and story. Tho, once again, it's useful to read all the Tips that pop up in the top-left corner of the screen. I had a great laugh when I tried to understand what the NPCs were talking about, until I noticed that they are basically [u] speaking in Simlish [/u] if they're not talking about sub-quest/main quest stuff, lol. Because you know me, I [b]HAVE TO[/b] check every detail to make my internal goblin happy. I love how the world is designed - even if it only [i]looks[/i] open but isn't. You can see nice views, pretty homes, not-so-pretty faces, posters from Oakmont... Oh yea. You've read it right. But the reuse of objects isn't annoying at all. To be honest, I smiled every time I saw a poster, a statue, or even a kitchen stove that I'd already seen in [i]The Sinking City[/i]. Especially since it's all pretty fittin…

Unfortunately for The Awakened, my first exposure to Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes series was Crimes & Punishments. It set a high bar - it really made you think like a detective and the short, episodic nature of its story made it extremely digestible. Every game since then has failed to reach its heights. That’s not to say that there’s no fun to be had from The Awakened but it feels like they just tried retrofitting an old game with updated technology without any further consideration, and the results are mixed. The story in The Awakened starts off innocuously enough: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson take on a case to investigate a disappearance. From there, the story builds up and the duo finds themselves jetsetting (boatsetting??) around the world to chase… you guessed it… a cult. My main issue with the story is that it feels rushed. Nothing is given the room to breathe and develop. The constantly changing setting means that you’re spending 2 hours at most at each location, which also means that, besides Holmes and Watson, every character is given very little screentime so you will not care about them. On the plus side, the duo’s descent into madness is actually pretty palpable. You…

Hard to make a decision about this game. Surely I want to recommend it, because I want to support the studio. I like the lovecraftian horror and I think this studio makes very solid games in that genre. Nevertheless work on mistakes needs to be done. My experience from this game is very controversial. What I really like are the story, characters and setting. But the gameplay feels sort of outdated and very repetitive. Basically my experience form the game is "I have to fight with the boring gameplay to see what gonna be next in the story" something like that. I Like the writing, art, characters, but the gameplay part rather tedious. There is not much to think about, but to repeat the same loop of investigation mechanics, even if you click randomly, eventually you'll get the right answer, and game never punishes you for failing in logic. I finished the game partly by watching the stream on YouTube, unfortunately. Like a movie it's perfect. Still worth trying and buying but on a discount offer.