Adventure Gamers - Forums

Origami - 04 October 2014 03:43 PM

Did you enjoy Sigma Harmonics? I read somewhere it was pretty awful, could’ve been your blog.

I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a very flawed game. The fundamental ideas are interesting (a detective RPG where level bosses are powered up by wrong deductions) and the deduction system is really awesome (you can basically come up with any solution), but it has a nightmare of an UI and the RPG elements are kinda iffy too. Great music though.

Finished C&P. Quite enjoyed the direction they went with this game and it definitely felt the most like a Holmes game of all of Frogwares games. Some random thoughts:

+ Yay for no more shizophrenic POV jumping between Holmes & Watson because they want you to be the great detective and be surprised at his deductions at the same time. This was a major gripe I had with the previous games and I’m glad they finally fixed it.
- On the other hand, Watson has become utterly useless now you don’t use him to fetch a book from the other side of the room. Toby and Random Officer are more useful than Watson. I wish they could have written him a bit more… talkative.
+ I like the deduction system. It’s not super original, but it works and it ties in well with the multiple ending approach of this game.
- But because the game kinda tells you when you’ve found everything, it’s kinda hard to not find all the evidence and find the real culprit.
+ Sherlock Scans don’t always help you, but heck, it’s cool! Kinda funny how a SH game borrows from Sherlock‘s presentation, which in turn borrowed heavily from game grammar.
+ I like how they reused some of the more interesting segments of previous games like using a timetable to figure out where every suspect was, or deducing the movements of a suspect in a room.
+ I am so glad there were almost none of those horrible slide / IQ lock puzzles. I hated the world in previous games where everybody used overly complex locks on everything because a key would be too easy. 
- Why is the relation between Sherlock and Mycroft like the one in Sherlock?
- The finale is a bit underwhelming, because the ties to the rest of the game aren’t really strong enough.
- Three of the cases are based on Conan Doyle’s stories, so those cases were kinda predictable. The game-original cases are… not really bad, but not as amusing as the Conan Doyle stories. Also, the choice of the Conan Doyle stories is a bit strange, because two are quite similiar…
- The second half of the first original story feels horribly out of place in the game.
- I kinda wished they would allow you to do multiple cases at the same time, like a Judge Dee story… Each case is kinda compact, so it felt a bit cramped at time.
- I wish the cases had more suspects.
- Not a big fan of the mini-game segments. Some were okay, some are always the same (lockpicking!) and some were horrible. And while I usually don’t mind QTEs, I had to redo an absolutely terrible one at the end of the fifth chapter three times. Which involved waiting a looooong time with reloading.
+ Home Alone Holmes
+ Taichi Watson

But it goes against the whole concept of ‘becoming Holmes yourself and the possibilty of making the wrong deductions / arrests’. Sure, I can make an arrest early in every case, but because I know (am told) that I still have areas to explore, tasks to do, I can assume that I don’t have all the information yet and thus it’s too early to make an arrest. It’s like they give you a pile of puzzle pieces and lay another one two meters away from you and say you must complete one puzzle. You could try making the puzzle with just the pile you have now, but it would be wiser to first check out the other pile to see if it has pieces you might need, right?

If a core concept of the game is that you can make false calls, then it should at least try to lead you to one, instead of basically outright telling you you are going to make a mistake. Had it been tied to a time system, sure, this would make sense (lessay, an innocent man is going to hang unless you present another case by deadline X), but now every serious player is going to try find all information (and as a result, end up with the right solution).

Can’t believe the game dropped out the chance to be one of the BEST GAMES and not only Sherlock Holmes game, by AUTOMATING almost every bit of exploration!

- What’s the point of having evidence items in your inventory if the game AUTOMATICALLY chooses which evidence item of those corresponds over a hotspot or in a dialog?! Say, you’re having boots in your inventory. Then, you click on a hotspot with foot prints. The game AUTOMATICALLY uses boots from your inventory and compares them with “foot prints” hotspot, thus making the deduction! And listen - I didn’t spoil ANYTHING for you! HA! The game always chooses the right item at the right place! The funniest part is that the player is required only to drag the “already-positioned-over-the-hotspot” boots to hotspot! All you’re doing is an action similar to drag&dropping; your windows icons to a folder! Imagine playing Monkey Island, and once you come and click on the cable line, the game AUTOMATICALLY COMBINES CHICKEN AND PULLEY, AND USES IT ON THE CABLE, leaving you to DRAG WITH YOUR MOUSE Guybrush over the ravine! You’re practically clicking your way through, while having a pseudo-interaction with the gameworld.

- What’s the point of having “Sherlock’s talent” and “Imagination” options if the game tells you EVERY TIME the right moment when to use them?! The difference between having those special skills, and not having them is ONLY that you’ll have to click one additional keyboard button! And there’s no option to turn the “hints” off!

Why am I disappointed? Because there’s a HUGE potential in all this! That very same evidence items are well thought-out with a neat description that might aid you in your discovery, but the gameplay kills every bit of interaction and that little creative thinking found refuge only in the “Deduction space”. And “Talent” and “Imagination” options are revolutionary concepts but TOTALLY USELESS when the game tells you when to use them. It would be alright if the game aimed for the interactive movie approach, but it’s not, there’s a big and ground breaking “individual deducing” concept here. Also, the atmosphere is just right, it’s miles ahead of The Awakened/Nemesis in terms of liveliness, colors, vivid locations that ooze with mystery, drama, background noise & people… but what it’s worth when Awakened and Nemesis are simply better games?

Wael - 06 October 2014 08:59 AM

Focus test showed players could wander Woodman’s lee during 20 minutes looking at what to do without these indications, it wasn’t fun or interesting for them.

If you ask me, it’s far, FAR better to wander aimlessly for 20 minutes (or less than 20 minutes, if I decide at any moment that I want to look at hints), than to be served with solution right away. Because these indicators ARE solutions - it’s: “Press this key now, and look what Holmes can do”, and not: “I’ll decide what’s the right time to use Sherlock’s 6th senses”, which is in contradiction to the general and original concept of the game. You see, by making hints, or indications optional, you’re configuring your game to adapt to individual player - someone will wander for 1 minute, someone for 10 minutes, and someone will enjoy wandering for 1 hour before deciding it’s time for a hint or an indicator - you’re individualizing your game. This way it’s only suited for those who want to click through a solution. The mini-games are great example - there’s an optional skip button. Perfect! Why, by default, not starting with no hints for 6th senses as well? Similarly - why not giving players an option to, for example, choose by themselves which evidence to use at a hotspot by highlighting it in the inventory (with an optional hints). Those two things would significantly boost the immersion, IMO.

Wael - 06 October 2014 08:59 AM

Won’t you be even more disappointed because you missed a puzzle, a feature at a certain time and prevent you to get a clue allowing you to conclude correctly?

But that’s brilliant! That’s exactly the type of “individualizing” the game I had in mind! Everyone will have the freedom to decide when it’s time to “call it a day”, or decide that there’s still some research to do. I think it’s brilliant that in Crimes & Punishments designers left the option to conclude the case even before gathering all the clues, but that “freedom” would have been even more accented if the exploration & puzzle part hadn’t been by default extremely automated.

In a detective game, where you solve murders, or any other crimes, failure should always be an option. Sometimes it just happens, that even if you know who’s quilty, you just can’t prove it. For an example I like how you can fail solving the case in LA Noire. Thatäs not faulty design, that’s good design as the game still continues, it’s the rest of the game that reacts if you fumble the ball.

I agree with diego and tomimt. In a game like this, with several smaller individual cases, failure should be an option (perhaps with some form of consequence further down the road).
Holding the player’s hand during the investigation is not a bad thing, but it should be mostly optional. If the game is really going as far as described, mostly solving things for you, then where’s the challenge? If most of the hint systems are optional, then at least everyone can play how he/she sees fit. Some people will prefer the hand-holding, some people will want absolute freedom of choice without hints, and some people will want something in the middle. If the hints aren’t optional, you risk alienating most of the fanbase…