“Elementary, my dear Watson.” With a massive following and growing renewed popularity, Sherlock Holmes games have a huge standard to meet with nearly unattainable expectations and preconceptions of how the game should play. A high expectation of unique storyline, outstanding graphics and super-sleuthing lore seems nearly unrealistic but certainly met during The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, and AbleGamers readers should be quite satisfied. On an unrelated note, I learned that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote that quote in the original series.

The opening cinematic sequence sets the scene as three young children stumble upon the memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. There might be something a little disturbing about children finding such a book, but it’s not the least disturbing element in this game. This sequence preludes a humorous initial training episode whereby Holmes determines a thief to be nothing more than a trained monkey. Case-closed. But, is that really the case?

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes takes a look at Holmes’ dark, psychopathic and borderline criminal, side of his personality with a throwback style that adventure-game enthusiasts would appreciate. The game is grotesque at times with details that, made me a little queasy (mind you, so did Mortal Combat.) The graphics are solid and the voice-acting as well, creating a very full setting for a very morbid tale.
You play as both Sherlock and Watson at different times while you try to find items and solve puzzles. The puzzles are frequent and frequently very difficult. “It is simplicity itself!” is often exclaimed by Watson, but I can honestly say I rarely felt that the puzzles were simple. Between you and I, I have to admit that I was very tempted to throw the controller at my boyfriend and tell him to figure it out. I found it frustrating that often puzzles appeared simple, but there were no instructions as to the goal. For some of the puzzles, it took me failing multiple times before I figured out what the goal was meant to be and It also took a very long time to unlock the puzzle bypass.

When I saw this game at E3, I was really excited about the deduction board created by Watson. I thought that this would be a prevalent piece in the game, but sadly this is not the case. I am disappointed by how infrequently the deduction board can be used and I feel that it I would have enjoyed the game much more if it were more integral.

As for gameplay, gamers can play in two viewing modes: 1st person view and 3rd person view (classic). In 3rd person, the player can have an overall view of the crime scene and the character being controlled. 1st person view allows you a better view when looking at objects. The game makes use of the full controller, aside from the d-pad and most of the controls are fairly intuitive. Unfortunately, the start menu cannot be accessed when in between conversation trees which is very frustrating if you are wanting to quit the game quickly.

Ablegamers readers should be able to play this game quite successfully. This game does well in terms of accessibility: it has subtitles throughout and uses a blue vs. green color system for keeping track of items that have already been interacted with. However, I would have liked to see the text of the subtitles change between characters to keep better track of who is speaking. There are some other sound effects during the game that I had a difficult time figuring out their purpose. There is a “ding” that I thought was indicative of being in the right area, eg. Like playing “hot and cold” as a child. However, the ding is indicative of your “Sixth Sense” being recharged. For readers who are hearing impaired, an icon does appear briefly at the top left-hand side of the screen at the same time as the “ding”. There are a few other sound effects that I didn’t make much use of, so, it’s safe to say that they did not interfere with game-play.

While The Testament of Sherlock Holmes let me down in terms of minimal use of the deduction board, it is a game that hardcore adventure gamers will want to play.
At a Glance

Mobility: The controls for the game utilize all but the d-pad, but generally only one movement is needed at a time. Precision is not an issue as there does not appear to be any rapid changes or button mashing. Gamers with the use of one arm should not have any difficulty playing this game. Recommended score: 9/10

Hearing: As mentioned, there is subtitling for all the dialogue and visual prompts for most of the auditory cues. There are some sound effects that aid the player, but as I did not make use of them, I can safely say it was not problematic Recommended score: 7/10

Vision: The game utilizes a blue vs. green color scheme for keeping track of objects that have already been interacted with. Playing in 1st person also allows a closer look at objects to be interacted with. Recommended score: 8/10

Overall: I think that fans of Sherlock Holmes or adventure-games will appreciate this game. Clearly the developers put a lot of heart into creating this complex, adult adventure.