Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery Of The Mummy

As I sat deep in reverie, stuffing my pipe and musing over a particularly perplexing edition of the Times crossword enpuzzlement, there became a peculiar rapping at my study door. Confident as I am in my own natural abilities of deduction, I detected a peculiarly anguished tone to the throcking performance.

As my butler, Withers, ushered her in, I could see my guest, as I’d suspected, was in a particularly overwrought state, even for a female.

“Please, Professor NowGamer,” she ejaculated, quite forthrightly I considered, “You must help me. It is Sherlock Holmes DS… I”, she hesitated “I... I have the most distinct feeling that it’s a total pile of arse, sir." Tears empustulated the narrow gaunt of her sorrowful smile and she wept "Though, for the life of me, I just cannot conclude for why.”

As the young lady burst into the fulment of tears, I handed her my conveniently placed pocket handkerchief, which, true to a true gentlemen, I should never be seen without, as moments like this amply testify.

“Calm yourself, young lady,” I replied, with an immediacy I still, despite myself, hold as a credit to my impeccable demeanour even to this day, “If, for one moment, you will contain your feminine givings to emotional excessment, I shall, of course, take up your case forthwith.”
 
With an almost unnatural swiftness, my guest reached into her bag, and, barely pausing to thrust the offending article into my hand, had quit my presence without a second’s hesitation. I fear I shall never understand the befuddlement, tish and fipsy exuded from the mind of a woman.

Despite my evidently assuring machinations, events took a further turn for the odd, even as the cartridge itself emitted a strangely forebidding air all its own as I began the insertionisation process. Once my DS was fully-wound, and Withers had assisted me in unclamping the unwieldy bolt which affixed the the stereoptic viewing areas, my investigation began in earnest.

Proceedings began poorly, but little did I know how balefully they would eventually meander. An opening sequence contained grainy, poorly animate and stilted CG characters accompanied by woeful, inaudible voice acting. Had this developmentalisation faculty, in fact, somehow inveigled their own friends and family into amateur dramatic duties? It was doubly disturbing to witness an actor from the colonies - crass types that they are - attempting to masquerade his languorously inept vocalisations as our very own Mr Sherlock Holmes!

A tutorial requiring the minds of the country’s greatest mathematicians followed, besmirching even my own considerable intellect - which I must confess to eventual abandonment of on account of what could only be meaningless words and diagrams. I was then dumped unceremoniously into a sketchily-rendered hallway. The graphiculations on-screen effectively reduced my available eyesight to that of a myopic llama (genus Vicugna). But, I hastened, conducting proceedings dutifully with my DS baton, I would not be deterred simply by relative blindness. Onward!

But progress was not to be. I found the world of Sherlock Holmes DS attempting to emulate the three-dimensional elements of Hotel Dusk – a far superior mystery, by all accounts – with sadly none of the panache, choosing instead of true 3D rendering to warped two-dimensional static images into a full, 360-degree range of motion the game neither required nor could adequately support!

The game could redoubtably have succeeded in its efforts had it followed the simpler template laid down by games such as Myst – a two-dimensional world of still screens with an interface befitting its simple, yet inherently effective, presentation.

… continued