Sherlock Holmes. Probably one of the best fictional detectives that ever was (although Detective Robert Goran from Law & Order: Criminal Intent is pretty good, and Monk...). He has existed for over 100 years, and continues to stay alive in the digital age. This Adventure game is definitely one of the best I've seen for years.

For those that don't know who Sherlock Holmes is, he is a late 19th century detective who lived in Inner London (221b Baker Street, to be precise). He and his friend, Dr. Watson (a physician who was in the British Army, but was dismissed after a serious wound in the Battle of Maiwand) solved very difficult crimes whenever one turned up. These characters were the brainchild of Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scottish author and physician. He started out making Sherlock Holmes short stories for The Strand Magazine - adding up to 56 Short Stories and four novels of the great detective. (After that, other writers started making extra stories, but respect was always paid to Sir Doyle and his creation.)

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened starts out with Dr. Watson rolling about in his sleep at a possible nightmare, with many references to quotes from the game. So it turns out to be in medias res or "In the middle of things". We see Mr. Holmes, looking very bored (though due to Sherlock's monotone expression, you can only tell by the way he sounds) and wanting to do some "mental gymnastics". Dr. Watson goes about eating his breakfast when he suggests to his friend that maybe he should read the local newspaper, or go down to the bookstore to find something to read. So Holmes takes his advice and heads out. On the way back to 221b Baker Street, Dr. Watson tells him that one of his patients has a problem, his servant has disappeared! This looks like a case for Sherlock Holmes!

This is the part where we really get to see the game in all its glory - we have to find the clues to figure out where this servant has gone. But believe me, this isn't always going to be easy, in fact, it's rarely as simple as you'd expect. Its not the learning curve that's steep, the puzzles in this game are actually fairly tough. You will need a keen eye and imaginative mind in order to pass some of these puzzles. But perhaps because the difficulty is so high, figuring out the answer is even more rewarding. There will be item puzzles, where you will need to find certain items and use them in different situations (like making a blowpipe out of a syringe filled with sedative housed in a hollow pipe). Then there are Action Puzzles, where you must look at all your clues around you, and get out to progress (such as being in jail and needing to use a spoon to open your jail cell.) Last, there are Text Puzzles, where you must search through all your documents to find clues to answer questions.

The graphics in this look impressive at times, especially when you look at gardens at some of the houses with all the flowers blooming, it just looks fantastic! Then you get the boring-looking parts, like on the lighthouse island, everything looks quite bland. But they have put the good-looking graphics at exactly the right times. A good example is the burlesque paddleboat where you see all the ladies with the sailors, but if you get too close they start looking pissed off at you. Now that's a plus in my books, characters reacting to your movements. There are also some physics in this game. At one point you have to open a locked door, so you start swinging around a hook on a string so you can grab a small weight and bash open the lock from the other side, pretty clever!

The sound is probably the game's "Achilles heel". The music is sometimes good, but really, very little emphasis was put onto it. On occasion, you walk into a room, and you hear the music coming from the piano or whatnot, or you come to the swamp and hear the crocodiles and cicadas. A lot of the time though, it's just plain silence, which doesn't make me feel anything, and can be quite a letdown, but doesn't destroy the whole atmosphere, just dumbs it down.

The storytelling is fantastic, and is really what makes this game especially good, but it's worth noting that this story is for more mature players. Not just because it can become gory, but also because it has a lot of adult jokes and words kids may not understand. The story is told excellently, down to the detail of how Sherlock Holmes came to his deductions to the way the paperboys speak. Sometimes you might not hear what someone just said, so they added in subtitles, which work quite well. They also have a section in the inventory page where you can check back for any dialogue spoken recently, making for a good way to remember all that has been said, instead of having to write down every detail just so you can get the next answer. The personalities of characters are very consistent, like Watson and his uplifting nature and the rich noble being all high and mighty - the personas feel very well done.

There are some minor issues, like clipping bugs (I swear, on some occasion I felt like my feet went underneath rock, and my face through solid wood), some small control glitches where one of the buttons would get stuck and would not stop me moving in that direction until I hit the corresponding button, and occasionally, some graphical issues, where I would get to see a pretty laser show!

But these minor issues aside, this adventure game is a good tribute to Sherlock Holmes. It shows that even old-style games still have a place with new technology.