The mysteries surrounding Sherlock Holmes are typically impossible for us to follow. He sees things in such a way that the normal person cannot fathom or deduce what is so simple to Holmes. This may have become tired, but after Robert Downey Jr.’s stunning performance acting as yet another brilliant scoundrel, we’re left with an iPad game dedicated to solving mysteries. Grab your coat!
Sadly, solving those mysteries isn’t exciting, even in the least bit. Sherlock Holmes Mysteries is a typical point-and-click adventure, except, of course, on a touchscreen. The main concern with the lack of excitement is that the team packed in no voice acting whatsoever. On top of that, the rudimentary audio, mediocre visuals, few tedious and dull mini-games, and a connect-the-dots mystery with dots often hidden in a haystack is what the final package offers.
While the game starts out fresh and new, it soon becomes a grind to find whatever clues to proceed to the next area, play through a mini-game or two, search for more clues, and repeat the process tirelessly at wit’s end. There’s no incentive to continue playing; gameplay is unrewarding, the humor is dry and stale, and clues are maddeningly hidden. Though, instead of pointing and clicking with a mouse over every pixel of the screen, we get to tap our screens like a drug addict, trying to find the one missing piece to the puzzle at hand.
Perhaps more upsetting than this is that there is absolutely no satisfaction to playing this game at all. Players will either become frustrated by more than one aforementioned issue, or they are mildly relieved to play through text segments, which require only reading.
There is only one mystery to be solved here, and that is whether you have the stomach for playing a game that will either bore you to sleep or cause such frustration that your iPad is at risk of physical harm. We’ve thrown controllers for better games than this. This is the sort of game you give to a friend as a prank, to watch them suffer. Even Moriarty wouldn’t have acted so diabolically.
