Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Developer(s) | Frogwares |
Publisher(s) | Frogwares |
Composer(s) | Viacheslav Pakalin |
Series | Sherlock Holmes |
Engine | Unreal Engine 4 |
Platform(s) | |
Release | April 11, 2023 |
Genre(s) | Adventure |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an adventure video game developed and published by Frogwares. It is a remake of the 2007 game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened and the tenth installment in the Sherlock Holmes series. The remake builds upon the original game with updated visuals, a new voice cast, and improved gameplay. The plot was also reworked to serve as a sequel to the 2021 game Sherlock Holmes Chapter One .
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on April 11, 2023. The game received generally positive reviews upon release.
In September 1882, Sherlock Holmes takes up a case brought to him by his friend and roommate, Dr. John Watson: Kimiha, the maori servant of one of Watson's patients, Captain Stenwick, has mysteriously disappeared from the man's estate. After surveying the house's grounds, Holmes concludes Kimiha was drugged, kidnapped and taken to the Port of London. Upon further investigation at the Port, Holmes and Watson find out several foreign workers have been disappearing after taking work from a smuggler known as "Dirty" Sommers. The duo search a warehouse Sommers operates out of and, during the search, Holmes is struck by visions of impossible, otherworldly environments. After Watson helps Holmes overcome these visions, the pair find a cult's ritual site underneath the warehouse, where an American private investigator who'd been looking into Sommers was killed in a human sacrifice and the kidnapped victims were packed into crates and shipped off out of the country. A review of the evidence leads Holmes to conclude that the victims were transported to the Black Edelweiss Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland.
In Switzerland, Watson procures a meeting with the Black Edelweiss' director, Professor Gygax, by pretending to be interested in studying the asylum's treatment techniques. Meanwhile, Holmes poses as the murdered American investigator to try to force his way into an inspection of the premises, only for Gygax to see through his ruse and have him forcefully sedated and confined in the asylum. After regaining consciousness, Holmes picks the lock on his cell and begins investigating the building; discovering that Gygax has been performing unethical, mind altering procedures on the people kidnapped by Sommers and shipped to her institution at the behest of a cult led by a British aristocrat. With the aid of Maurizio, a patient who believes himself to be Napoleon, and another, Gerda, whose doll Heidi orders her to kill people, Holmes gets a message to Watson about what he's uncovered. Deciding to conduct his own research, Watson discovers the former director of the institute, Professor Becker, was forcibly lobotomized by Gygax and committed to the institution. He uses this knowledge to make a fake note from Becker which gets the Professor out of her office and allows him to search it, where he finds evidence that the payments from the cult are being made with precious stones through an auction house in New Orleans. Watson helps Holmes escape from the patient wing of the asylum, after which the pair discover that Professor Gygax has been murdered by Gerda, whom Holmes unwittingly helped escape.
The duo travel to New Orleans to investigate the auction house through which Gygax and Sommers' client paid them for their services, but their efforts are hindered by Sheriff Grubb, the corrupt local police chief. Nevertheless, with the assistance of Lucy, a local madame, and Champagne, an informant, Holmes and Watson find out the man delivering the precious stones to the auction house was Ashmat, the butler of a local business man called Errol Arneston. Holmes and Watson travel to Arneston's mansion in the French Quarter and find Eulah, a young black woman, outside the gates of the estate. She claims her mute, younger brother, Davy, who works for Arneston, has been missing for days and she has been unable to get inside the property. The duo find a way inside and discover a massacre has taken place at the mansion, where several workers were killed and Arneston was kidnapped and taken into the swamp. During their investigation, the pair are hindered once more by the Sheriff, who tries to lynch Eulah as a threat, but Watson manages to save her.
Holmes pieces together that Ashmat kidnapped Arneston and killed the servants when they interrupted. Davy also witnessed this but managed to lock himself inside a room to avoid Ashmat, where he has been hiding ever since. Eulah talks Davy into unlocking the room and telling the investigators everything he knows about Ashmat and Arneston. With this information and other clues found in the mansion, Holmes deduces that Ashmat worked for the cult unbeknownst to Arneston. He also finds out Arneston was in a secret relationship with Lucy, so the pair next speak to her and inform her about her lover's kidnapping. Shaken, Lucy tells them Arneston suspected Ashmat was involved in some kind of criminal operation and had once followed him to a secret lair in the Bayou. Holmes and Watson travel into the bayou with a boat borrowed from Champagne and, after avoiding an ambush by the Sheriff and his posse, they discover the ritual site, where they find Arneston, delirious and wounded but alive, as well as a strange book bound in human skin. Holmes suffers from more vivid visions of impossible underwater structures and has to be rescued by Watson after he nearly has a mental breakdown. The pair return Arneston to a grateful Lucy, who promises to help nurse him back to health and also begins plotting with Champagne to take revenge on the Sheriff.
The investigators return to London and, while Holmes rests to recover from nightmares he's suffered since New Orleans, Watson seeks the aid of bookshop owner and occult researcher Barnes. With his help and that of Sherlock's overbearing, government agent brother Mycroft, Watson determines the cult's leader is Lord Rochester, who is preparing a ritual of mass human sacrifice at the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse in Scotland to awaken an ancient deity. He is also asked by Mycroft to optionally investigate the disappearance of one of the elder Holmes' informants. After arriving at the designated address, Watson discovers that the informant is dead, apparently due to the stings of wasps whose nest was nearby. From the surroundings and the notebook, it turns out that the informant was controlling mysterious meetings at the Japanese embassy. At the end of the notes there is also a letter M written in a different style. After giving the information, Mycroft tells the doctor to stay as far away from the case as possible. Holmes and Watson travel to the lighthouse in the middle of a violent storm. They find Ashmat mutilated himself to death after being driven mad by visions and are then confronted by "Dirty" Sommers, whom Watson manages to subdue and tie up. Atop the structure, Rochester is conducting a ritual involving obsidian crystals that keep the brainwashed kidnapped victims hypnotized, whom he directs to sacrifice themselves to the Old Ones by jumping from the lighthouse. Holmes distracts Rochester while Watson destroys the crystals to free the entranced victims. The cult leader tries to persuade Holmes of the truth of his visions, insisting none of them were hallucinations or madness but rather Holmes' superior mind perceiving the true reality others cannot bear, but Holmes resists his influence and distracts him long enough for Watson to rescue his victims. Distraught at his ritual being disrupted, Rochester throws himself into the sea as a giant tidal wave approaches. Holmes stands before the approaching wave, insisting he must see if Rochester's proclamations were true, but he is dragged inside the safety of the lighthouse by Watson.
Weeks later, Holmes and Watson are back in London. The pair rescued all the surviving victims but Holmes is still haunted by nightmares. Watson tries to write about the case, but Holmes insists that word of Rochester's actions should not be made public, lest other madmen be inspired to follow in his footsteps. As Holmes begins to have another vision, Watson gives him a sedative to help him sleep and then burns his manuscript about their adventure.
The game was announced in July 2022. [1] A Kickstarter campaign was launched on August 4. [2] The developer stated that the Kickstarter funding was meant to provide a financial safety net for the game. [3] The game was funded on Kickstarter on September 5. [4] The game's release was delayed by about a month due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. [5] One of the development difficulties were caused by the consistent Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy generating systems which lead to the repeated scheduled blackouts across the country. [6]
Aggregator | Score |
---|---|
Metacritic | 75/100 (PS5) [7] 72/100 (PC) [8] 73/100 (XSX) [9] |
Publication | Score |
---|---|
NME | 4/5 (XSX) [10] |
PC Gamer (US) | 80/100 (PC) [11] |
CGMagazine | 7.5/10 (PS5) [12] |
Pocket Tactics | 6/10 (Switch) [13] |
Over 10,000 copies of the game were sold within the first 10 days of release. [14]
The game received weighted average ratings of 72 through 75 out of 100 according to Metacritic across its PC and ninth-generation console versions. [7] [8] [9]
PC Gamer called the game "cleverly designed, atmospheric, and polished" but criticized the short length and the DLC policy where all the side quests have to be bought separately. [11] Rock Paper Shotgun recommended the game to fans of the series only. [15] NME liked the removal of combat from the game but disliked the puzzle design in other world sections. [10] CGMagazine called the game "a solid entry to the franchise". [12] Pocket Tactics liked the game but didn't recommend playing it on the Switch due to performance issues. [13]
Mycroft Holmes is a fictional character appearing in stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from 1893 to 1908. The elder brother of detective Sherlock Holmes, he is a government official and a founding member of the Diogenes Club. Mycroft is described as having abilities of deduction and knowledge exceeding even those of his brother, though their practical use is limited by his dislike of fieldwork.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is a full-motion video game released in 1991. It is based on a tabletop game-gamebook hybrid of the same name first published in 1981, and features the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo is a graphic adventure game developed by Mythos Software and published by Electronic Arts in 1996. It features the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes created by Arthur Conan Doyle. The game is a sequel to The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel.
Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy is an adventure game for Microsoft Windows, developed by Frogwares and released in 2002. The player controls Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he investigates the mysteriously abandoned mansion of British archeologist Lord Montcalfe. It is the first in the Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games developed by Frogwares and Viva Media, and was ported to the Nintendo DS in 2009.
Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring is a video game developed by Frogwares and published in 2004 for Windows by Digital Jesters in Europe and Ubisoft in North America. While the game is "inspired by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", it uses an original plotline — set in London in 1897 — and allows the player to investigate a murder as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson. A version for Wii was also released in Europe in 2011. By 2010, Secret of the Silver Earring had sold 500,000 copies worldwide.
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an adventure video game developed by Frogwares and published in 2007 for Microsoft Windows. The game follows an original plotline as Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson investigate a series of strange disappearances related to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Sherlock Holmes Versus Arsène Lupin is an adventure game developed by Frogwares. The fourth game in the Sherlock Holmes series, it was released in October 2007 and is distributed by Focus Home Interactive. It was preceded in 2002 by Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy, in 2004 by Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring and in 2007 by Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.
Frogwares is a Ukrainian video game development studio headquartered in Kyiv with subsidiary offices in Dublin, Ireland. The studio and its subsidiaries develop adventure games for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch as well as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and mobile.
Sherlock Holmes is a series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The games are based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson. While the franchise is based on Doyle's stories, each game has an original plot and storyline.
The Enola Holmes Mysteries is a young adult fiction series of detective novels by American author Nancy Springer, starring Enola Holmes as the 14-year-old sister of an already famous Sherlock Holmes, twenty years her senior. There are nine books in the series, and one short story all written from 2006–2023. This pastiche series borrows characters and settings from the established canon of Sherlock Holmes, but the Enola character is Springer's creation and specific to this series.
Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper is an adventure game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360, developed by Ukrainian studio Frogwares and distributed by Focus Home Interactive. It is the fifth game in the Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The game takes place in the London district of Whitechapel in 1888, the historical site of the Jack the Ripper murders.
The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is an adventure video game in the Sherlock Holmes series developed by Frogwares and distributed by Focus Home Interactive. After being delayed from an original 2010 release, the game was released in September 2012.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is an adventure mystery video game in the Sherlock Holmes series developed by Frogwares in 2014 and distributed by Focus Home Interactive from 2014 to 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Frogwares regained the publishing rights to the title on Steam and the game reappeared on other platforms in the start of 2020. A Nintendo Switch version was released on February 3, 2022.
"The Abominable Bride" is a special episode of the British television programme Sherlock. The episode was broadcast on BBC One, PBS and Channel One on 1 January 2016. It depicts the characters of the show in an alternative timeline: the Victorian London setting of the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. The title is based on the quote "Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife" from "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" (1893), which refers to a case mentioned by Holmes. The story also draws on elements of original Conan Doyle stories of Holmes such as "The Five Orange Pips" (1891) and "The Final Problem" (1893).
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is an adventure mystery video game in the Sherlock Holmes series developed by Frogwares for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016. It was released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on 25 October, while the PC version was released earlier on June 10. A Nintendo Switch version was released on April 7, 2022.
Call of Cthulhu is a role-playing survival horror video game developed by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The game features a semi-open world environment and incorporates themes of Lovecraftian and psychological horror into a story that includes elements of investigation and stealth. Despite its title, it is not a direct adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu" as it is mostly based on the Cthulhu Mythos along with the 1981 role-playing game of the same title.
The Sinking City is an action-adventure game developed by Frogwares and inspired by the works of horror fiction author H. P. Lovecraft. Set in the fictional city of Oakmont, Massachusetts during the 1920s, the story follows private investigator and war veteran Charles W. Reed as he searches for clues to the cause of the terrifying visions plaguing him, and becomes embroiled in the mystery of Oakmont's unrelenting flooding.
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an action-adventure mystery video game in the Sherlock Holmes series developed by Frogwares. It is also the first game in the series to be self-published by Frogwares itself. Described as an "origin story", the game follows a young Sherlock Holmes as he investigates a mystery in his family's home on the Mediterranean island of Cordona after his mother's death. It is the first open world title in the series.