Sherlock Holmes is back in The Devil’s Daughter, but does it match up to Crimes and Punishments?
In a climate where video games are being made on bigger budgets and designed to rival Hollywood films in sheer spectacle, I applaud a small team like Frogwares for sticking by a series like Sherlock Holmes: one where this isn‘t the budget to roll-out expensive TV advertising and live action commercials, and where the focus is on quiet deduction, not loud explosions.
But if anything, the Devil‘s Daughter has caught the Hollywood bug and arrives with an intent to push the action envelope further. It feels more like a contemporary title now, casting its hero in the role of a clean-cut action hero with a face skin-grafted to look like Jon Hamm. A neurotic, obsessive sleuth this is not, and even Watson – typically the bumbling English archetype – is suddenly edgy and cool with a new stylish haircut fit for the big screen.
Holmes is a missed opportunity. Going into the game, I was expecting to find a myopic detective strung out on a medley of vices and battling his own ego while trying to keep his life in one piece, but while this is teased in the opening cinematic, the appearance of his daughter, Katelyn, snaps him out of his stupor and forces him to be boringly altruistic.
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The story of Sherlock and his daughter is the heart of the game and is sandwiched between individual cases Holmes must solve. Their relationship, then, is a critical axis upon which the experience rests, but if Sherlock is rote, Katelyn is downright annoying. It‘s hard enough to portray convincing adults in video games, but I‘ve yet to see a young child done well — with the exception of Ellie in The Last of Us and a young Nathan in Uncharted 4. Frogwares aren‘t Naughty Dog though and Katelyn has none of the necessary restraint or believability to resemble a child from real life. The writers shove her into the story like a bolt out of the blue and make her a needy and unsympathetic character, giving her a voice that sounds like a microphone backfiring to boot.
The Devil‘s Daughter is at its best when it leaves parenthood well behind and settles into the routine established by 2014‘s Crimes and Punishments, a game that never got the credit it deserved. At times, this one is every bit as good, serving up one case after another with a murder to solve in each and a string of clues to find. The delicious deduction boards are back and my absolute favourite, and again, it‘s perfectly possible to send the wrong suspect to jail. There‘s even a hard mode this time around, affording you less time to scope out characters and find evidence.
“The delicious deduction boards are back and my absolute favourite, and again, it‘s perfectly possible to send the wrong suspect to jail.”
Frogwares nailed the garden variety detective story in Crimes and Punishments, and here, they try to change the cases up a bit. Take one, which centres on a pile up at an intersection, an innocuous flashpoint with a decidedly nefarious explanation. This case, in particular, feels fresh as you piece together the clues to work out what sparked the domino‘s effect – and why.
By the same token, The Devil‘s Daughter feels less like a cosy Sherlock Holmes story and more like an action game, with a surprising number of quick time events and action sequences to navigate, including one devilish death trap involving spikes hidden under revolving floorboards. While the visuals are certainly striking enough to accompany this new dramatic focus, the controls don‘t hold up quite as well, and you end up navigating each sequence wishing it would end.
Fans of Crimes and Punishments will still find a lot to love, and though there isn‘t a standout case like The Kew Gardens Affair or Blood Bath, there is more variety to the challenge. In the last game, Frogwares fell into the trap of putting every single clue they could think of behind some intricate locked device. These puzzles became laughably overused midway through the game, and the developers have moved on from that trope. You can expect environmental brainteasers and even the odd Nathan Drake leap of faith.
This is a game in transition, then, and the work of a development house that is looking eagerly towards Naughty Dog and even Quantic Dream for inspiration. Frogwares is trying to have some fun, and they‘ve stuffed a huge amount of variety into the experience, meaning you‘re almost never doing the same thing twice. You can‘t fault the effort.
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It‘s a pity that the main story is hard to like, because it ends well, reaching a surprising and heart-pounding conclusion. In between, it gives you a look at a new Sherlock Holmes: a character who is less sleuth and closer to an adventurer, with a dash of Nathan Drake about him. I prefer the myopic variety, personally, but if Sherlock wants to head to Hollywood, why shouldn‘t he? The Devil’s Daughter is less methodical as a result, and depending on your appetite for excitement, that‘ll suit you just fine.
Score: 7/10
About the author: Edward finished The Devil‘s Daughter in approximately eight hours on the PS4.
Follow Edward Love on Twitter: @edlovewriter
