Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Frogwares
Release Date: September 28, 2004

Buy 'SECRET OF THE SILVER EARRING': PC

A shot rings out.
A woman screams.
A man falls dead.

There is much rejoicing. This is because we finally have a Sherlock Holmes game where it at least feels like the people onscreen are Holmes and Watson and not just random strangers who are pretending to be London's famous detective duo. The history of Sherlock Holmes-based games has been pretty spotty at best, ranging from half-decent text adventures to mediocre FMV romps through England, but (as seems to be a recent theme, thank goodness) finally we have a game where the focus isn't on showing off the technology but on presenting the story. Secret of the Silver Earring does that very nicely indeed. A lot of time was clearly taken on the writing and story here, but unfortunately, the playable portion of this game got lost or hurried somewhere in the rush.

About that story: the year is 1897 and Holmes and Watson have received a pair of invitations to a gala dinner event from one Sir Bromsby. His daughter is returning from being schooled abroad, it's her 18th birthday, and he also has a few business announcements to make. Watson persuades Holmes to attend, and as they stand in the crowd, Bromsby takes the stage to make his speech. He gets perhaps four words into it before being shot dead in front of a ballroom full of witnesses. Holmes, predictably, is intrigued. The exits are sealed, witnesses are questioned, and Watson starts a fresh notebook.

For most of the game, you'll be playing as The Great Detective himself, with the occasional foray into looking at things from Watson's point of view. Now, I say you'll be playing as them, but it's really more the case that you'll be merely pointing them at where to look next. Holmes and Watson have very much their own methods of investigation. About all you get to do is hunt for clues among the environment and prompt our heroes to ask their next questions. Conversation takes place as a laundry list of topics, all you really have to do is click each one and listen to the reply. There's no occasion to weave through lines of questioning or boldly press a matter. Simply ask everyone about everything and you'll have the notes you need for the end of the chapter.

Likewise, searching for evidence can get to be a tedious process. The rooms and outdoor areas of this game are rich with pre-rendered detail, which is wonderful to look at but can often be tough to sort through. As with real crime scene investigation the clues are often miniscule, a few scraps of hair or a slight smudge on a wall, and you're expected to find each and every one before Holmes allows himself to move on. Even after you find a clue, Holmes will often only say "Hrm," or occasionally "I need something," to indicate he wants to measure out the evidence or look at it more closely with his magnifying glass. You'll need to read his notebook to find out what he actually thinks of what you just gathered.

Really, the best comparison for 75% of this game is "CSI: Victorian England." This is entirely appropriate to the history of the character, as Arthur Conan Doyle was a pioneer in the science of crime scene investigation, but gamewise, it will only appeal to the highly detail-minded.

I mentioned notes earlier, and those are important as well. At the end of each "day" in preset game time, Holmes and Watson retire to the familiar Baker St. apartment to go over the details of the case and draw some tentative conclusions. This involves two things. One of them is accessing the chemical analysis table, which is frankly boring. Holmes narrates exactly what to do next ("To soften this cloth for analysis I should soak it in a solution of soap and water."), and the only puzzle here is coping with the interface to make what he wants to do happen. (Click the soap on the water bowl? No. Pour the water into a test tube? No. Put the cloth in the water and THEN add soap? No. Put the bowl of water on the Bunsen burner, turn it on, then add soap? Oh, of course.)

The other end-of-day activity is the quiz, and that's a little more involved. Holmes presents a set of 5-10 questions to you, which need to be answered using one of the copious notes Watson and Holmes have taken over the course of the day. This makes you look at and really analyze the evidence, going back over the testimony and clues gathered and applying them as needed to fill in gaps.

Did the killer escape through the kitchen? No, the servant working in the kitchen and the young lady standing in the hallway to the kitchen both claim no one went by them. How tall was the suspect? The scuff mark in the paint was measured five foot nine inches off the ground, and it can be presumed that was at shoulder height, so roughly six feet tall. The problem here is that often there's two or more notes that would substantiate a conclusion at first glance, but only one correct answer. It's up to you to look past initial impressions and find the most fitting answer. Luckily, you've got Scotland Yard around to run down all the lines of inquiry that are obviously wrong, so you can focus on the real work.

I'm making the game sound like a straightforward detective procedural, and for the most part, that's exactly what it is. That part's good. That part works. Every now and then, however, it's like the developers realized "Oh, we're making an adventure game here. Toss in some contrived logic puzzles, a timed maze, and maybe a badly done stealth segment." That's what they did, too.

Okay, the logic puzzles are there because one suspect is a mechanical genius and likes to create card-playing automations and puzzle locks. They're still contrived and dull. Doing a magic square puzzle on a checkerboard to unlock a door because the character that built the lock is a puzzlemaker is still the same exercise as doing a magic square puzzle on a chessboard because the developers couldn't come up with anything better to have you doing.

Yes, I am a little bitter. No, there's no excuse for the maze. Moving on.

The areas you'll explore are fantastically rendered and largely static; there's no animation anywhere. The character models in this game are at once highly detailed and not detailed enough. There are a number of little details that made me grin, like Holmes' gestures with his pipe or Watson's tendency to surreptitiously slide his notebook out of his pocket every time someone around him starts talking. Other characters get less attention; Inspector Lestrade, in particular, looks like he's a poorly-animated figurine carved out of plastic. All of the characters share more or less the same walking animation as well, a floaty glide that only involves bending the knees and skating around.

Additionally, Sherlock has a run that can only be described as "The Fruity Shuffle." It's the kind of vague arm-bouncing run that doesn't actually make him speed up at all. This is a problem when you actually need him to move in a faster, less dignified way, like in that timed maze segment I keep harping on because it really got on my nerves. (I'll stop now.) Also of note is the fact that you don't actually need to solve the case at all! Sherlock will happily steamroll ahead with the ending whether or not you've deduced the correct motive and murderer or not. The last quiz is entirely optional, just another sign that it doesn't really matter if you're along for the ride or not.

Music is reasonably good, but nothing terribly memorable, rich with piano and violin. The voice acting gets the point across. A special note should be made of Watson, who stands out above the others as a fine actor. Another special note should be made of Wiggins, who sounds like a middle aged American account manager trying to pass as an eight year old British street urchin. Just... no. Luckily that's a small part. A final note for dedicated fans of the series: I heard not one "Elementary, my dear Watson" pass Holmes' lips. Instead, he tended to murmur "It is simplicity itself," after a breakthrough.

On the whole, this is a decent game for Sherlock Holmes fans and people who enjoy the Victorian period in general. It really isn't much of a game, but the story carries it so well it doesn't need to be... until the developers try to force gamehood upon it.

Grab a walkthrough or something and get this one on the cheap, and you're good for several hours of fun watching Sherlock solve a deeply baffling case. People who actually like to play their mystery games, though, can take a pass here.

Score: 6.5/10