For more than two decades now, Frogwares have slaved away in the point and click mines, an unsung hero of an oft-flailing genre. Their main export, the Sherlock Holmes games, are certainly no high art, but the early entries are exemplary of early 00s PC euro-jank. The origins of the series might be little more than a cheap knockoff of games like the 7th Guest with a thin Holmes veneer, but almost immediately they evolved to become truly ambitious detective games. Sure, the next five entries are still essentially linear point and click adventures where the mystery solving is relegated to reading comprehension tests, but the spirit is there.

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes felt like a capper to this era, containing all the familiar and beloved (?) elements of the prior Frogwares SH games. A swansong of sorts, with a story that is unbelievably silly, even in a series that features Eldritch entities and Jack the Ripper himself. Even within that game though, there is still ambition, a desire to evolve and innovate. Where Testament largely falls flat on that front, Crimes & Punishments achieves a (near) total victory. This is the *the* Sherlock Holmes game, for better and for worse.

Almost all of the mechanics you come to expect have been thrown out here, replaced with a brand new suite of detecting tools. None of them are truly original, but almost all of them feel distinctly Holmes-flavoured (the ability to visually analyse people you meet and deduce facts about them is a particularly well implemented example). Where before there were a handful of minigame-esque puzzles, here you can't move for them. Lockpicking, body-analysis, crime scene visualisation, contradictions in conversations, scientific evidence analysis, forking paths of deduction, there are so many ways you'll be investigating that it's rare the game feels repetitive at all. The major downside of this variety is that none of these elements feel particularly fleshed out and often you'll solve puzzles almost entirely accidentally.

This game is far and away the most visually impressive Sherlock game yet, being leagues ahead of Testament just two years prior. It does have that slightly off putting UE3 vibe at times, but it makes better use of the engine than most games did. There's still a fair amount of asset recycling from previous games (keep an eye out for that one homeless old guy with the weird hat from all the way back in Nemesis), but they've been brought up to par with the newer visuals generally. Voice acting is great too, though I do somewhat miss the charmingly ♥♥♥♥♥ performances of earlier games.

By far the biggest change is the structure of the game. Rather than following one big case across different chapters, here Sherls and John tackle six separate crimes. There's a vague narrative thread between the first and last, but it's so in the background that I'd completely forgotten about it by the time it showed up again at the very end. This is a great change, giving the game a feel closer to the short story compilations rather than the novel sized stories previous games were going for. Sherlock's inductive reasoning and spagetti mysteries often work best in the microcosmic, and this goes doubly for the games too. In previous entries, it was often easy to forget why you were doing what you were doing. Playing out a complicated, confusing mystery over six to eight hours often meant that the climax made no sense at all by the time you got to it. C&P is now comprised of cases that are about as long as an episode of Midsomer Murders and it's a welcome change.

Even better than this though is the new way conclusions are formed. Rather than finding out the one singularly correct solution, each case now has multiple, conflicting endings and you have to choose which one you think is correct. It's a little too easy to check your working and the game in general is pretty easy, but it's a fantastic idea that I'd love to see more often. Hilariously, you can choose to absolve or condemn your prime suspect, which can result in the fantastic scenario wherein Sherlock accuses an innocent bystander then tells them he's going to let them go anyway. The moral judgements aren't very interesting in the intended way, but I'm glad of their inclusion just for this peak piece of gaming comedy.

So finally, with their seventh attempt, Frogwares made a truly great Sherlock Holmes game. It is far, far from perfect, and is realistically the perfect example of a great 7/10 game, but in my heart I just respect what they've achieved here to score them any lower. It's too easy, the cases are a little too short and the loading screens are annoying, but god it's a charming, ambitious, scrappy little game and I love it.

Another great game in the Sherlock Holmes series that, despite being almost 10 years old at the time of this review, was able to give me a remarkable experience. Even with pretty old graphics and a really simple gameplay, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments still managed to keep me engaged from start to finish as I went through 6 intricate cases. What strikes me the most is that each case is vastly unique and well crafted, with great locations, interesting characters and a complex network of clues that can bring to various, completely different conclusions to each case. The game also leaves the player plenty of freedom, as you are always able to travel back to previous areas and explore them or complete the tasks in whatever order you like. You also have total control over Sherlock's thought process and intuitions, meaning that you can choose between different endings (you will eventually find out if you were right or wrong) based on the way you link certain clues together. As if it wasn't enough, the game also lets you decide the fate of whoever you declare as the culprit, such as sending them to prison or letting them escape, which occasionally proved to be a tough dilemma given the circumstances and motives involved in the crimes. Combine all these amazing elements with great dialogues, a healthy mix of seriousness and humour, as well as bits of Sherlock Holmes lore, and you are looking at a perfect Sherlock Holmes game, absolutely recommended.

Game crashing once every hour at least. Unplayable.