Sherlock Holmes: The Trail of the Awakened
| Sherlock Holmes: The Trail of the Awakened | |||
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| Original title | Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened | ||
| Studio | Frogwares | ||
| Publisher | Focus Home Interactive | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
November 25, 2006 | ||
| platform | Windows | ||
| genre | Point-and-click adventure | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | Mouse , keyboard | ||
| language | German, English, French, Italian | ||
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Sherlock Holmes: The Trail of the Awakened is a video game from the point-and-click adventure genre released in 2006 . The game was developed by Frogwares for Windows and distributed by Focus Home Interactive . It is the third game in the Sherlock Holmes game series developed by Frogwares , based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional heroes Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson , but plays before the second part .
action
London, 1894. The city seems completely cleansed of crime and the great master detective Holmes is plagued by boredom. He takes on an apparently rather uninteresting case: A patient of Watson, Captain Stenwick, misses his servant Baowpa, a Māori . Holmes begins investigating and concludes that the servant has been forcibly abducted. Not an isolated case, because as Holmes and Watson find out, people of all races are disappearing all over the world, seemingly indiscriminately and indiscriminately. If everyone initially thinks of escape, after the disappearance of more people in the port of London , the famous detective finds out about an organized human trafficking , linked to the Cthulhu sect that actually exists in the game and its strange customs. Both investigators obtained information about a mysterious institution in Switzerland , in which the mentally ill are treated - and which apparently also serves as a transshipment point for the disappeared as well as valuable jewels.
Another clue that leads them to New Orleans in North America then sheds more light on the darkness: the mysterious sect did everything in its power to usurp world domination and destroy humanity. The intended apocalypse in the form of the evocation of a Leviathan - the embodiment of the deadly god Cthulhu resting in the ocean - is set to break through the world these days, leaving Holmes and Watson little time to stop it. Back in England, the trail leads to Ardnamurchan Lighthouse on the Scottish west coast , where Holmes and Watson manage to solve the case.
Game principle and technology
The third-person perspective, which is classic for adventures, has been changed in favor of the 1st-person perspective known from first-person shooters. In addition, Holmes and Watson travel to exotic locations such as Europe and America by their standards. Throughout the game you play exclusively from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes, with a few exceptions, in which you play as Dr. Watson acts, although this is mostly limited to simple messenger services. In the original version you control the character exclusively from the first person perspective and in this way question people, collect and combine objects and use them at the appropriate times. Several interim questions from Holmes, which, from Watson's point of view, must be answered in order to advance in the game, are intended to encourage the player to think and replace the test known from the predecessor Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring at the end of each level, in which one had to answer yes or no to several questions and had to prove this with appropriate documents or testimony.
Production notes
At the end of 2008 Frogwares released the "Sherlock Holmes Trilogy", which, in addition to Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Mummy and Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring, also contained the game Sherlock Holmes: The Trail of the Awakened Remastered . This is a modified version of the original game, which includes all patches that have been released to date and anticipates many innovations from the fifth part of the series, Sherlock Holmes chasing Jack the Ripper . For example, you can now choose between first and third person perspectives and have a help system that, when activated, shows all possible interactions on the screen. The graphics and textures have also been improved. In 2013, Big Fish Games , a provider of casual games , released a version of the game for mobile devices with the iOS operating system .
Sherlock Holmes' archenemy, Professor James Moriarty, appears in the game. During his investigation in the psychiatric institution "Schwarzes Edelweiss", Holmes finds a file that refers to a mentally handicapped man who was picked up in a river. This is an indirect reference to the short story The Last Problem , in which Holmes and Moriarty fight a battle at the Reichenbach Falls , from which only Holmes returns as a survivor in Doyle's stories, the end of Moriarty remains uncertain. In the game itself, Holmes tricked Moriarty, who he later met in the laundry, was apparently badly battered by the fall into the Reichenbach Falls and who he later met in the laundry, to use his vindictive energy against the guards, which Holmes caused the Escape succeeds.
- During a train ride through Europe, Holmes is asked by a boy in a cutscene to solve a puzzle, which Holmes also manages. It later comes out: The boy is the young Hercule Poirot , the hero of the novel by Agatha Christie.
- In the various newspapers that Holmes studied during the game for his investigations, there were, among other things, national reports about a series of burglaries in Paris, the perpetrator of which left his initials AL on the crime scenes. This is a reference to another popular fictional character, master thief Arsène Lupine , who Sherlock Holmes has to deal with in the follow-up game .
- In the game, people named Dr. Gygax and Errol Arneson, a tribute to the inventors of Dungeons & Dragons , Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson .
- There is also an inmate named "Montcalfe" in the psychiatric institution "Schwarzes Edelweiss". This is an homage to the first part of the Sherlock Holmes series in which said Lord Montcalfe plays an important role (schizophrenia).
reception
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Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened received mostly positive reviews. The Metacritic review database aggregates 28 reviews to an average of 72. However, various specialist magazines also expressed criticism. The most fundamental change, namely the introduction of the first -person perspective, was sharply criticized by supporters of the third-person perspective because, as described on gamecaptain.de, "does not work here at all and causes unnecessary searching of the sections and running work." it is said that the scenes are graphically in order and reproduced in great detail, but they "are dreary and hard to beat in terms of loneliness." The characters also look pretty good, according to gamona.de "[are] the animations [... ] but sometimes ridiculous. ”The detective work is neglected with a few questions and chemical analyzes, since it is primarily just about finding people and objects without which the game cannot continue. In contrast to its predecessor, the locations, which can be completely phased out, give the impression that you can move very freely in London, but the accessible world is only as broad as it is urgently necessary for the investigation. On the other hand, there is the coherent synchronization and background music, which was positive in all tests.
The trade magazine Adventure Gamers placed Sherlock Holmes: The Trail of the Awakened 2011 in its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games at number 80.
Web links
- Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. Retrieved March 26, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.gamecaptain.de/PC/Artikel/2983/Sherlock_Holmes_3%3A_Die_Spur_der_Erwachten_Test.html?page=Weed
- ↑ http://www.gamona.de/games/sherlock-holmes-3-die-spur-der-erwachten,test-pc:article,179595,page-fazit.html
- ↑ http://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/PC-CDROM/Test/7549/5038/0/Sherlock_Holmes_3_Die_Spur_der_Erwachten.html
- ↑ AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved January 16, 2016 .