Thanks to the team over at Frogwares, we have a new Sherlock Holmes experience that delivers a fantastic and in-depth detective experience. The game starts off with a young Sherlock and his assistant Jon, who is not to be mistaken as John Watson. Yes, there is another assistant before Watson joined, but there is a bit of a mystery behind him which players will put together.

Sherlock is returning home after the death of his mother, but events that played out are shrouded in mystery as Sherlock and Jon start to investigate. This installment and the telling of the Sherlock story is set as his origin, where he is starting to gain his reputation and you are in full control of the cases you take on.

In this open-world detective game, you will have a lot of things to use in your arsenal to get the best results. From taking a deceptive approach, going for the method of violence to get answers you seek, or by pure deduction from examining all the evidence and hearing things from others in the world, you can then place all the pieces together to solve whatever case you are taking on.

The first case players will find themselves in is a missing jewel in a hotel, and don’t worry, I’m not going to say who did it. That takes the fun away. This was a great introduction case as it explained each of the abilities Sherlock can use to solve the case. Players can use a skill that will display some key elements about a person when looking at them, helping sort them out as key witnesses or just a bystander.

It is similar to how things happen in the movies, where time slows and we hear Sherlock’s thoughts, breaking down the person and giving the results of where they have been or what they do for work. When Sherlock is ready to place the evidence together, there is an option to visit his Mind Place to start linking the evidence together but don’t worry if you are not a big crime puzzle player, you are able to change what you have linked, and if two pieces of evidence have no common connection, it will not match.

The environment and world created for Sherlock Holmes is one that has stunning features and great environments to explore. The first area is restricted to only the hotel as a training portion, but even exploring around the hotel itself gave off some great visual vibes. When you finish the first case, you are then able to freely explore the town set on a Mediterranean island, so there are a lot of coastal environments that are made very well and are wonderful to take in.

The audio for the game is another spot-on achievement, as eavesdropping is a great way for Sherlock to gain information. The only bug I could place on audio was during dialog talking with characters.

The next segment of some conversations felt they were not synced correctly, as a few times characters would start talking over the line before they were meant to. At first, I thought it was just them interrupting to change a subject or quickly answering, but the subtitles still had more dialog that was lost due to this small issue.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is a great take on the Sherlock stories, and so far with the time I have played, is such an in-depth and well-put-together world with stories to keep players entertained, even if they are new to the detective themed games, and this is a game worth checking out.

Written by: Shane Walsh