Parent's Guide: Crimes & Punishments: Sherlock Holmes - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Crimes & Punishments: Sherlock Holmes is a game set in Victorian England, that puts you in the deerstalker of the great detective himself. Called on by Scotland Yard to solve the most mysterious of crimes and murders, it's up to you to investigate the crime scenes, speak to witnesses, investigate suspects, and discover any secrets that any may be hiding, before eventually piecing all the parts together, and discovering whodunnit.

There's a total of six cases to deal with here, each of which will take between one and several hours to complete. Each follows a fairly similar flow of events, as you examine the crime scene in great detail, and solve any mysteries you come across, whether it's taking a fragment of metal back to your lab for analysis; looking up something a character's told you in your archives, just to double check they're telling the truth; or even picking a lock.

In terms of accessibility, though, Crimes & Punishments: Sherlock Holmes is really only a game suitable for experienced players, as there's very little in the way of tutorials, or explanation about what you actually have to do. Icons appear on screen with no indication about what they mean, many puzzles give you no guidance as to what you're actually supposed to try and achieve, and the game's deduction grid, where you have to link together evidence you've discovered, with the intention of eventually piecing together who's the killer, similarly has nothing in the way of instruction, despite being a rather complex concept. Some sort of hand holding wouldn't go amiss for beginners here. The game also requires a very good grasp of logic, problem solving, and reading, as you'll be required to read lengthy passages, searching for any clues that may be relevant to your text. One particularly grizzly sample is: "The blade cut through the orbit of the frontal bone, ripping a part of the frontal lobe and the corpus callosum after which, completing its trajectory in the cerebellum, caused haemorrhagic legions." All things considered, this is a game that is best left for older players in terms of complexity.

With a lot of crime scenes to investigate, Crimes and Punishments: Sherlock Holmes can get pretty gruesome at times. One body has been pierced by a harpoon, with a large pool of blood beneath it, while and another has had their eye destroyed, and orbital bone has broken by some unknown implement, things can look a bit grizzly. The descriptions you get back from the autopsy aren't much better either - see the sample sentence in the box below for an example. On the other hand, any sexual references are few and far between (there's a reference to finding sailors "where the rum and the red lights are"), and similarly no swearing.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360