Introduction:
Becoming a detective is very hard, but solving a crime is much more difficult and so you’ll need good knowledge, good eyes to spot the clues and good vibes to put them all together. So if you want to be detective but you can’t do it in a real world, the game The Lost Cases of S. H. 2 will give you opportunity to try yourself in this type of job.
Gameplay:
The main character is, of course, Sherlock Holmes and his best friend Dr. Watson, and they travel to the 221 Baker Street to deal with Victorian criminal cases, usually dealing with murder cases. There are 16 cases to be solved and they’re all independent from each other but however there are some cases that refer to past cases. Sherlock Holmes is always as brilliant as you heard, read or saw about him, and Dr. Watson is not so far behind him as he plays a key role in helping Holmes to solve the crimes that require their ‘special touch’. They aren’t the only characters in the game, as there is Mycroft, a person who is well informed and full of knowledge. As this is hidden object game you’ll spend lots of time looking for hidden objects. A list of items you need to find is on the left-hand side of the screen and you’ll be very busy looking for items like knife, handkerchief, walking stick, gloves and so on. While looking for these items you might find yourself in a situation when you can’t find them straight away, so you can click the magnifying glass or hint which reveals where the item is. As the hints are being used the number of them will decrease as the hints aren’t infinite (recharging). They need to be replenished and the only way of doing so is finding smoke pipes around the scenes you are looking for items. The game is full of mini-games and other puzzle games. In some cases you’ll play them together while you’re investigating a case, for example while you’re at archeological site a mini-game can pop-out. Now, here are some of those games: Spot the difference – is a puzzle game where you’ll have two pictures: one of the locations prior to some crime which already happened and one after that. You’ll have to find differences between the two pictures by clicking them, you’ll be notified to how many clues you have to find; Find the hidden object – you’ll get one picture and a list of hidden items you have to find, and you’ll know what exactly you’re looking for and you’ll just have to find them; Sorting the suspects – this is done at the end of each case. This goes like this; you discover clues and then you get various suspects and after all collected evidence you’ll have to sort them out in categories like ‘old’, ‘female’, ‘rosy cheeks’, ‘earring’, ‘employee’, ‘bow tie’ and so on; Memory – this is presented by the suspects with the item that connects them. Then suspects fade and come back, but only one will have their evidence change with something else and you’ll have to find which item has been changed and that will take some time until you find your suspect. The game can last from 5 to 8 hours but you’ll be offered to replay it. Each mission is scored on a number of factors (speed of finding clues, time left, etc…) and by replaying it you may get higher score. Then when you complete the main cases you get a mini-game which involves turning tubes to drop colored droplets into a test tube. And after completing several cases, you get four Holmes stories to read. In some cases you’ll be able to find out who get to the last game. You’ll feel like a really big detective because you’ll be working in a big investigation. At the end, S. H. 2 is much better game than its previous release. The puzzles are very easy and can be solved by anyone and in case of some difficulties, the hints are available in a huge number, but you’ll have to think about not clicking too many times on an incorrect picture, as you’ll get cursor spinning around for a few seconds. The music is classical and very nice, and maybe will disagree with this, but the voice acting has improved when you recall the previous part of the game. And overall this is a very good hidden object game with enough puzzles to keep you interested for many hours.