Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened review – A Study In Think

Reports of missing people stretching from an asylum in Switzerland to the swampy bayous of Louisiana in the US of A. Grisly murder scenes, corrupt officials, and the growing paranoia that something ancient is lurking beneath the surface of reality. That sounds like an impossible case, right? Not if you’re gumshoe genius Sherlock Holmes, as he takes on the dread horror of HP Lovecraft’s cosmic pantheon in his latest game. Sort of.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is in fact a reimagining of the original 2007 game that introduced audiences to developer Frogwares’ take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective. Unlike some of the other superb remakes we’ve seen this year, in the form of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4, The Awakened takes a stranger but necessary approach to rebuilding the original game for a modern audience. In case you were living under a rock for the last year–or you only get Russian state-approved news–the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has caused massive upheaval in that nation and an incalculable loss of human life in the process.

Before Russian president Vladimir Putin felt the urge to start a tiny dick-measuring contest that would have disastrous consequences, Frogwares was hard at work on a new open-world game. Putin’s invasion changed those plans, and after a successful Kickstarter campaign, the studio now has a brand-new version of their original Sherlock Holmes game ready for fans of cryptic mysteries to dive into.

It’s worth noting that The Awakened feels like a game that has been kitbashed with the assets of previous Frogwares titles, but that’s not a bad thing. Taking design cues from Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One and pulling in elements of 2019’s The Sinking City, The Awakened is less of a remake and more of a reimagining of that first game. The bare bones – the frame of the 2007 Awakened – are there but with the gameplay elements of Chapter One and the spiffier visual technology of that 2021 release, which naturally makes The Awakened 2023 stand out graphically when compared to its predecessor.

The other big change when comparing against the 2007 game is the art of detective work. Young Sherlock keeps a much tidier casebook, can use his powers of deduction to highlight elements in a crime scene to more closely examine, and puts several clues together within his mind palace to find an answer. Every mystery has an answer if you look hard enough, as many of the most improbable conundrums can be solved by examining the clues and homing in on a reasonable answer.

No matter how impossible the crime might be, sharpening Occam’s razor will uncover what really happened, and it’s this focus on pure detective work that makes The Awakened such a great and frustrating cerebral game. Frogwares has a unique talent for making you feel like both the biggest idiot in the room and a forensic genius, as its Sherlock Holmes games typically don’t hold your hand when it comes to solving mysteries.

While you’ll have a few useful mental tools depending on the difficulty settings chosen, like being able to ping the environment for items and people of interest to interact with, you’re very much left on your own when you start gathering clues and examining the evidence. How you piece these elements together can come quite naturally, but there are other facets of gameplay that aren’t properly explained and can lead to some incredibly frustrating moments as you run around a map looking for the single clue you’ve overlooked.

I’ll be honest and admit that I had a few moments early in the game where I felt less like the genius detective that Frogwares wanted me to be, and more like the Will Ferrell version of Holmes. That said, once I had a grasp on which leads to properly pursue by going over my casebook and specific icons with a magnifying glass, the game was definitely afoot.

When you’ve got those gameplay mechanics nailed down, The Awakened is a lean and mean crime-solving machine in action. With Chapter One serving as the foundation of this game, anyone who played that prequel will be instantly familiar with how the younger Sherlock moves, works, and looks. Don’t expect any gunfights and fisticuffs, but do expect crime scenes that’ll take you across the globe as Sherlock investigates a shadowy cult and risks falling into madness as he begins to question his very sanity.

That supernatural element isn’t as prevalent here as it is in Frogwares’ Cthulhu Mythos mystery adventure The Sinking City, but there’s always a hint of something unnatural lurking in the dark corners of The Awakened – a sinister plot involving ancient deities beyond mortal understanding that is hinted at but never directly confirmed, while Sherlock slowly finds himself trapped between reality and maddening horror. What is real and what is a byproduct of a tortured intellect? While the answer might lean towards the Victorian Age being far more brutal than any fiction you’ve ever read, The Awakened doesn’t close the book on those feverish nightmares entirely.

Another narrative twist with this game is its depiction of the Holmes and Watson partnership – two friends with a hunger for mystery, and who are very much dependent on each other. Occasionally, you’ll be able to take control of Watson as he finds himself investigating areas that Sherlock would otherwise be unable to examine, although the only real gameplay change here is that Watson lacks the power of concentration that Holmes possesses.

What is fascinating, though, are the differences between the two detectives, and how their partnership is reinforced by the end of their journey. Sherlock is intelligent to a fault and pure blunt-force trauma when it comes to interacting with society, whereas Watson is tortured by his memories of war but can still manage delicate situations with surgical precision. Both men form a single fully-functioning detective, but by the end of The Awakened, the ramifications of dealing with grisly murders, suicidal cultists, and the soul-crushing truth of reality will have dark consequences for one of them.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a fascinating reimagining of a game that has, frankly, not aged that well. The original is a clunky and obtuse beast of riddles and cryptic clues, and while The Awakened has inherited some of those traits, the end result is a surprisingly handsome and haunting descent into madness that never outstays its welcome. The fact that this game was made in less than a year while a dictator unleashed hell on Europe is nothing short of a miracle, and if Frogwares decides to give the other older Sherlock Holmes games a similar remake treatment, I’ll happily gobble them up.

Because once you know what you’re doing, these are superb games for anyone looking for an intellectual pursuit.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is out today, 11 April, on all consoles and PC.