The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

This is the 6th main line Sherlock Holmes games from Frogwares. This is actually the first I ever played back on the 360 so it was interesting to see if it held up on a replay. The plot is primarily investigating a murder involving a poison but it spirals out into an intriguing mystery which has reputations shattered and sets up a later game. It has lots of call backs especially to Ripper as you once again venture into Whitechapel and meet familiar faces from the last adventure. There are lots of interesting locations to visit and all of them are very detailed and look great even now over a decade later. The voice actors are all very good. I have to admit I didn't realise that the Holmes actor has changed. Kerry Shale takes over from Rick Simmonds and does a great job carrying on the torch. Watson is one again brilliantly voiced by David Riley but sadly this is for the last time having voiced the role. I believe that another character who appears near the end is voiced by Jonathan Oliver (who narrates the excellent Where Eagles Dare) but I cannot confirm this online. The format for the game is now well established and is mostly unchanged from the previous title Jack the Ripper. The deduction board makes it's return which is a good way to piece together the clues you have collected. The only two new features is one where you can choose which of two leads to pursue first (though you will do both) and one section where you can switch between Holmes and Watson to solve connected puzzles. I don't think this has been repeated but it was a nice idea showing them working together. The game also continues with the more focuses approach established in the previous title. It is pretty clear what you need to do next and where to go. Areas you need to examine or interact with are blue, if you have seen everything they either disappear or turn green. Once again you can press the space bar to highlight interactable areas. The puzzles are some of the strongest, they were all pretty clever with a locked safe and a time line of events being the highlights. You have the option to skip a puzzle if you are on it too long but I didn't find any too challenging. Getting this to run on Windows 11 seems to be getting harder. It used to launch with no issue but now seems to require dgVoodoo2 to get it working, at least for me. After that I had no issues, no crashes and no glitches. Overall this games feels like refinement of the ongoing formula. It doesn't introduce any major new gameplay features but everything feels more polished that the previous title. It has one of my favourite combination of plot and puzzles and I am glad to discover it holds up after all this time. 8/10