Sherlock Holmes Chapter One
As if to justify the open world, Holmes is often pulled into wild goose – or elephant – chases. This mystery drags him from ad-hoc zoo to forest ruins, an archeological dig and a yacht club. By the end, the thread is very frayed
Readers of a certain age may associate young Holmes with the stop-motion cake assassins of the Barry Levinson movie; Frogwares’ prequel proves similarly hard to swallow. And the problem here is almost pudding-related: a lack of just deserts. The writers spin cases that keep multiple suspects in play, with you rewiring the synapses of Holmes’ mind palace to explain how the same clues might incriminate numerous rogues. But the final decision rarely feels definitive: one case ends with a shrug and a “guess we’ll never know”, while another fingers the culprit and asks you only to blackmail other villains with the revelation. The series has long had a moralistic streak – after pointing the finger, you decide whether to hand the accused in – but these mushy ambiguities undermine the sleuth’s signature deductions.