The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes

The Good
This is a strong and solid adventure -- the type of game that garnered point-and-click fans. The graphics and sound must have been astonishing for its day. Perspective motion, orthographic projection, digitized speech, and attention to detail must have floored audiences back in the day. I'm impressed by the game's use of music. Each "area" has its own tune, but the tune eventually stops. It's a nice balance between a stoic no-music game, and worse, a game that plays the same tune over, and over, and over, and over, and .... In fact, it's all the more impressive when you consider that this game was released about the same time as "Secret Of Monkey Island". To be sure, it would be hard to tell which is the better game, but I think this game clearly has the more impressive sound and graphics. Pretty admirable when a game goes against Lucas Arts... and wins!

But the real question is, what does the game hold for us -- adventurers who live in the era of OpenGL and Direct-X?

The game, although tremendously dated by now, easily stands on its own two feet. The puzzles are logical. There is very little pixel-hunting (which seemed to be a staple of adventure games back in the early 1990's). The plot was fairly intricate, even by today's standards.

The mood and setting were done very well for a game of the time. Production quality is sky-high. The voice acting (while sparse), in my opinion, outshines some modern games like Syberia and Longest Journey. Too bad there isn't more of it.

Also, the game is non-linear. There are many threads that run in tandem. Astonishingly, I'd say this game is much more non-linear than, say, Syberia.

Lastly, the length of the game is admirable. It's long, but the designers knew where to stop. Just the right length.

The Bad
If you put the game into context, there's very little not to like. I suppose one might object to some of the puzzles as being "do this, talk to that, now go there". This game would be characterized as for beginning to intermediate adventurers

However, the type of logic puzzles present are wide and varied. There game strikes an extraordinary balance. Truly a sign of a very well designed game.

And that's the worst thing I can say about this game. :-)

The Bottom Line
The game was not hyper-original or a trend setting marvel for its day. As mentioned, it's a contemporary of the first Monkey Island game. The interface and game mechanics will be very familiar and intuitive to anyone who grew up on the LucasArts SCUMM based games or the early Leisure Suit Larry games.