Secret of the Silver Earring
“The game’s afoot, my dear Watson…and it stinks!”
Tags: Secret of the Silver Earring Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Ludwig on Mar 6th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Secret of the Silver Earring (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Adventure | No | ||
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“Holmes, whatever are you doing?”
“Ah! Watson, come and have a grand gander at this fascinating contraption!”
“Good heavens, I’ve never laid eyes on such a brazenly bizarre thing. What in the world is it?”
“It’s called a computer and it is quite elementary, my dear Watson.”
“It is?”
“No, not really. It’s an intricately designed mechanism composed of various circuit boards, memory chips and magnetic disks, all acting in unison to endow me, as the user, with a strange sensation known as fun. At least, that’s how it functions in theory.”
“Oh? It’s not working properly?”
“It is elementary, my dear Watson.”
“What is?”
“It seems that my choice of program, a game called The Secret of The Silver Earring, was less than satisfactory. It’s a traditional adventure game starring me and it claims to be inspired by my memorable adventures.”
“Are you saying that it isn’t providing you with any sort of fun?”
“It is elementary, my Dear Watson.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Furthermore, I can make several observations from my personal experiences with this game. It is clear that the developers are lonely individuals, spending most of their time hunched in front of screens with very high contrast and low resolution. Several of them must wear corrective lenses. The lead designer has size 8 feet and is prone to washing his hands compulsively at least six times a day, most likely to cope with the eggbeater incident that dominates his early childhood memories.”
“Your powers of observation and deduction continue to amaze me, Holmes! You gained all that from just playing the game?”
“In addition to a splitting headache and a deep sense of regret, yes. Moreover, I’ve also deduced that you’ve chosen to wear your favorite pair of Long Johns on this very day.”
“Astonishing! How could you possibly have known?”
“You are not wearing any pants.”
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It doesn’t take the world’s greatest detective to figure out that Secret of the Silver Earring is an adventure game that fails at just about everything it attempts, including being merely mediocre. Whilst playing as Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed super sleuth and getting to the bottom of a perplexing case of murder and betrayal is certainly a sound concept (it certainly worked for the much older series, Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes), Frogwares’ ham-fisted implementation quickly mangles it beyond recognition, leaving the distinguished author revolving at uncanny speeds within his grave and players wishing that they too could occupy a coffin. The game is essentially built on a lie – it seems as if you’re solving a murder when in actual fact, you’re watching somebody else solve it for you.
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Upon arriving at a flamboyantly fancy party, Holmes and Watson are just in time to witness the prominent Sir Bromsby get shot by an unknown assailant, though the blame is initially placed on the man’s soft-spoken daughter. Not eager to turn down an investigative challenge, the dynamic detective duo are quick to leap into action, gathering even the most obscure bits of evidence, thoroughly interviewing all the suspects and gutting those pesky red herrings. Switching control between Sherlock and his subdued sidekick, you’ll guide them to the answers they seek…and that pretty much sums up the extent of your role. You are not solving a mystery here. You are staring intently at a screen and hunting for patches of differently colored pixels which may or not comprise an incriminating footprint or an inscrutable piece of cloth. Then, you click on it.
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Following that daring action, one of two events may occur. The first, being the most entertaining in a “I wish I was dead” sense, is Sherlock Holmes trying and failing to make his way to the spot you just clicked on. Even with all of his astute observational skills, he is often unable to notice mundane items such as chairs and tables blocking his way, something which causes him great difficulty in reaching his destination in a timely manner. He might try to change his direction at first by turning in place, and when that doesn’t work, he’ll turn again. And again. And again. And again. Watching the world’s greatest detective endlessly twirl around like an unmotivated and terribly depressed ballerina has its merits, but I’m pretty sure Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote “Sherlock Holmes and the Poor Pathfinding Code.”
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Should you find yourself being unaffected by the game’s poor navigation, Sherlock will pick up or examine the piece of evidence you clicked on. Presto! That’s half the mystery solved, as there are very few traditional puzzles in the game. When you’re not finding and clicking on deviously hidden odds and ends, you’re questioning witnesses and suspects. Even that sentence is a bit misleading, since you’re really just cycling through a list of topics of discussion, each compulsory to the completion of the game. Since you’re never given multiple dialogue options (something I’d consider to be a standard for the genre), the sense of actually conversing with someone quickly deflates into a tedious sequence of clicking and listening to the response from a voice actor trying too hard to maintain his posh British accent.
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Back at Sherlock’s 221B Baker Street headquarters, things are equally exasperating. You’ll usually be called upon to use the power of science in analyzing some of the evidence that you’ve collected at a crime scene. Now, messing around with chemicals and microscopes may sound exciting, but once again, Holmes finds a way to wrestle the control and the fun from your hands and instead barks out orders and essentially does all the experimentation for you. Once you’ve done as he says, he’ll respond with “Hmm” or an “interesting” and draw his own conclusions…to which you are mostly oblivious. Indeed, Secret of the Silver Earring commits one of the most cardinal sins in gaming – the main character knows more than you do. There are several points during the adventure where Sherlock will draw the most absurd conclusions and, when questioned about them, he’ll change the subject and keep the details for a later revelation. It’s rather frustrating when you, as the player, are meant to be solving a mystery with the in-game characters and they actively hold information from you, making you nothing more than a bored spectator.
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And it’s not as if the storyline is all that interesting. In fact, it’s rather dull as far as Sherlock Holmes mysteries go, aiming for brute complexity as opposed to intrigue or wit. None of the characters you’ll encounter are particularly interesting and the various motives and subversive scheming they represent aren’t quite up to par with the game’s source and inspiration. It’s quite a sad state of affairs when you need to give the player a summary of what’s happened so far after every major event, and it’s a downright annoying state of affairs when said summary comes in the form of a quiz. Ah, nothing says “enjoyment” like “quiz”! These sections require you to answer a series of yes/no questions and then motivating your answer by selecting either pieces of evidence or conversations from your journal. If you happen to get one wrong (or even all of them), Sherlock Holmes will disappointedly point out that you’ve made a mistake but won’t bother telling you which one (or how many) you got wrong. Naturally, I don’t need to tell you what a delightful experience it is to trawl through reams and reams of dialogue, which you just had to listen to a short while ago, in search of a specific topic that may help you pass an insufferable quiz.
Continuing from the subject of suffering, it should be noted that Secret of the Silver Earring (reminder: an adventure game) contains a stealth section (reminder: gameplay gimmick poorly implemented by games not in stealth genre). Sherlock Holmes has to sneak into a critical area and must avoid guards and pesky dogs by hiding behind crates.
WRONG.
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Let’s say we accept the ridiculous concept that Sherlock has to sneak around, avoiding guards and pesky dogs. It still doesn’t work. Not only is the slow moving detective’s pathfinding ability dubious at best, the game’s code is so dodgy that dogs are gifted with magnified X-ray vision and can see him standing behind a house, instantly sending you to a Game Over screen. I honestly can’t provide an explanation as to why this particular game has or needs a stealth section, but the sheer frustration provided by it leads me to believe that someone deserves to be blamed for this. Blamed and SHOT repeatedly.
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Now, let’s discuss the game’s good points. No, really, it has several. Alright, it has two. The graphics are excellent, with the prerendered backgrounds perfectly capturing Victorian era England with exquisite detail and atmospheric lighting. The character models, especially for the main characters, also look superb and are nicely animated. There are a few inconsistencies where conversations between Holmes and Watson aren’t lip-synched at all, but otherwise things are visually splendid. The game also boasts a very clean and simple interface that makes scavenging through inventory and the aforementioned journal trawling quite efficient, that is unless you consider operating a mouse to be extraordinarily difficult.
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Of course, even with good graphics and an easy interface, it’s rather difficult to recover from the Metal Gear Sherlock debacle. Secret of the Silver Earring is powered by a solid concept (you’re the world’s greatest detective!) but hideously marred by several poor design decisions (you’re watching the world’s greatest detective!). Not even the storyline, the backbone of any worthy adventure, is capable of keeping things together in this murder mystery misfire. With tedious pixel-hunting and cycling through one-sided dialogue passing as gameplay, this is one adventure game well worth passing by on store shelves.
“It is elementary, my dear Watson.”
“Are you still saying that, Holmes? It’s getting rather irksome.”
“But it’s my trademark phrase. It defines my very being.”
“You never said it in the books, you know.”
“Well… I suppose it’s time I update it to more modern sensibilities, then. How about…It’s elementary, dawg!”
“Please. No.”
“It is elemental, my Dear Watson. FLAME ON!”
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Excellent graphics + Clean and efficient interface |
4.9 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Pixel-hunting for clues is tedious - Linear and uninteresting dialogue - Navigation through environments is a pain - Boring storyline - Sherlock’s evil quizzes are annoying - Repulsively designed stealth section…Bah! |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| This mystery is best left unsolved. | |
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Tags: Secret of the Silver Earring
Posted by Ludwig on Mar 6th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
