Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What happened here? I really want to know, what on earth happened here? It was all going so well. Crimes & Punishments was a renaissance for a series that had long languished in obscurity. A huge step forward for Frogwares' series and detective games as a genre, with higher production values, more open-ended puzzle design and a brilliant structural shift to multiple, short cases rather than a single, sprawling one. Frogwares achieved the seemingly impossible: completely reinventing a long-running series whilst respecting and incorporating its identity.
And then came the Devil's Daughter. After a decade and a half of honing the perfect, Holmes-ian tone, they spaff it all up the wall and make a dull, action-centric semi-reboot. (God that's too many hyphens) Gone is the long-familiar aquiline face of Sherlock, replaced with some John Hamm looking motherfucker. Bye bye, perfectly cast voice actors, hello generic modern British voice. Guess what? Sherlock doesn't wear suits anymore, no, of course not, he's just too cool for such fuddy-duddery! No, now he looks like he's tumbled through a burning River Island, emerging clad in a boring woollen overcoat and horrible scarf, his boring face now permanently smeared in out-of-character stubble.
There's an obvious retort to all of my complaints, and that is "well who cares? If it's a reboot, then just see what they do with it" and that is where you, rhetorical strawman, are dead wrong. This is not a reboot. In fact, this is the most serialised entry in the series, directly following on from the ending of Testaments four years prior. (spoilers) Sherlock is a dad now. A sexy dad to an evil daughter and it's truly dire. C&P was ingenious in its decision to play down the connecting plotline, but DD does the exact opposite in building flimsy, short cases around a confusing and offensively shit central plot that culminates in a stupidly over the top finale that puts the nail in the coffin of Sherlock's characterisation.
Deep breath now. Wow. Yeah I didn't love this game, but it's not just about these things that go against what I hold so dear about this character and this game series. The mechanics from C&P have returned, but they might as well have not done. If you thought that game was easy, good god, Devil's Daughter practically begs you to finish its puzzles before you can even collect all the pieces. Its cases are woefully underbaked, with dull minigames, simplistic puzzles and obvious outcomes that never surprised me. The padding on display here is outrageous, every twenty minutes you're forced to play through another dire minigame or worse, a protracted QTE sequence. Be it, I shit you not, lawn bowls, canned stealth sections or an extended chase scene from a gunman, this game loves to make you do anything other than sleuthwork. When half of your game has a giant "skip" button in the top right, you've probably fucked up and need to go back to the drawing board.
You might think I hate this game, and to be honest, I probably do. But I can't find it in me to blame Frogwares. Even while they're completely fucking it up, you can still feel the love and passion they have for this character. More than anything, I'm confused. How could this have happened, how could such promise be so thoroughly quashed so quickly? I think I know the answer: BBC's Sherlock. Yet again Stephen Moffat has inadvertedly destroyed something that I love, and I'm not even surprised.
And then came the Devil's Daughter. After a decade and a half of honing the perfect, Holmes-ian tone, they spaff it all up the wall and make a dull, action-centric semi-reboot. (God that's too many hyphens) Gone is the long-familiar aquiline face of Sherlock, replaced with some John Hamm looking motherfucker. Bye bye, perfectly cast voice actors, hello generic modern British voice. Guess what? Sherlock doesn't wear suits anymore, no, of course not, he's just too cool for such fuddy-duddery! No, now he looks like he's tumbled through a burning River Island, emerging clad in a boring woollen overcoat and horrible scarf, his boring face now permanently smeared in out-of-character stubble.
There's an obvious retort to all of my complaints, and that is "well who cares? If it's a reboot, then just see what they do with it" and that is where you, rhetorical strawman, are dead wrong. This is not a reboot. In fact, this is the most serialised entry in the series, directly following on from the ending of Testaments four years prior. (spoilers) Sherlock is a dad now. A sexy dad to an evil daughter and it's truly dire. C&P was ingenious in its decision to play down the connecting plotline, but DD does the exact opposite in building flimsy, short cases around a confusing and offensively shit central plot that culminates in a stupidly over the top finale that puts the nail in the coffin of Sherlock's characterisation.
Deep breath now. Wow. Yeah I didn't love this game, but it's not just about these things that go against what I hold so dear about this character and this game series. The mechanics from C&P have returned, but they might as well have not done. If you thought that game was easy, good god, Devil's Daughter practically begs you to finish its puzzles before you can even collect all the pieces. Its cases are woefully underbaked, with dull minigames, simplistic puzzles and obvious outcomes that never surprised me. The padding on display here is outrageous, every twenty minutes you're forced to play through another dire minigame or worse, a protracted QTE sequence. Be it, I shit you not, lawn bowls, canned stealth sections or an extended chase scene from a gunman, this game loves to make you do anything other than sleuthwork. When half of your game has a giant "skip" button in the top right, you've probably fucked up and need to go back to the drawing board.
You might think I hate this game, and to be honest, I probably do. But I can't find it in me to blame Frogwares. Even while they're completely fucking it up, you can still feel the love and passion they have for this character. More than anything, I'm confused. How could this have happened, how could such promise be so thoroughly quashed so quickly? I think I know the answer: BBC's Sherlock. Yet again Stephen Moffat has inadvertedly destroyed something that I love, and I'm not even surprised.