Unsatisfied with Sherlock Holmes' Earring
Our Wednesday Night Adventure Club finally finished The Secret of the Silver Earring and we're glad to be done with it. Obviously not written for a small group of friends with poor memories who get together once a week to play, we were so thoroughly confused by the end that even the 15-20 explanation of the case couldn't clear up all of our questions.
It didn't help that the interface was so frustrating. For example, moving the cursor over certain parts of the screen would change it to feet, indicating that you could, in theory, click there to go to the next screen. In reality, those clicks didn't always take you to the next screen, let alone cause the character to move. For reasons we could never figure out, the cursor would sometimes change in the middle of a hotspot. And in other cases, clicking on a hotspot would only cause Holmes to respond "I have no interest in that." Then why make it a hotspot???
The end of day quizzes were also ambiguous. Questions like "Is there any evidence that X is directly connected to the case?" when the only evidence we had was that many years ago X worked in a building that today we found a body in. "Directly"? I think not. And even when the answer to a question was clear, the evidence required to back up the answer which two of the four documents that showed Y was in jail should we use to prove that Y was not an honest person? Could we use the documents that implied that Y was blackmailing his employer? UHS Hints was invaluable at this point, and the commentary ("Believe it or not, the answer to this question is yes.") made us feel a little better about not being able to answer the questions to the game's satisfaction.
Most mysteries I know start with a simple concept ("This person has been murdered"), widen out to many different pieces of evidence ("This person was involved in racecar driving, gambling, and had mob connections"), some of which get eliminated ("This person had no gambling debts and was on good terms with the mob."), narrowing suspicion ("This person was sleeping with another driver's wife."), until all the evidence that's relevant points directly at the solution. In the case of the Silver Earring, none of the evidence narrowed; instead it continued to spread out until there were so many paths and motives that the murderer or murderers could have had that we kept thinking there's going to be some final evidence that ties it all together. The final blow came when we were unexpectedly asked who was responsible for each of the deaths that occurred in the game, but we were not allowed access to our body of evidence. And it didn't even matter! You get shown the ending movie regardless of your answers.
And in the end, it turned out that Sherlock Holmes, the character we had been playing, was keeping some of his deductions from us! He had sniffed a suspected murder's hand while kissing it to verify that she couldn't have used the gun. He had eliminated one suspect early on and had secretly had him act suspicious in order to help flush out other suspects. Why, then did we have to continue investigating his involvement? And why did he lie to the police and say one day he wasn't interested in the inheritance and the next demand to have his share?
One final thing: I told my friends from the get-go that one character mention in passing was the key to the whole mystery. During the final exposition, it was revealed I was right. But during this entire time, we did absolutely no investigation into said character and he wasn't even shown on-screen until this final scene!
All in all, The Silver Earring is a frustrating, overly-complex game that may have worked in novel form (as it was originally intended), but in game form was simply out of control.
It didn't help that the interface was so frustrating. For example, moving the cursor over certain parts of the screen would change it to feet, indicating that you could, in theory, click there to go to the next screen. In reality, those clicks didn't always take you to the next screen, let alone cause the character to move. For reasons we could never figure out, the cursor would sometimes change in the middle of a hotspot. And in other cases, clicking on a hotspot would only cause Holmes to respond "I have no interest in that." Then why make it a hotspot???
The end of day quizzes were also ambiguous. Questions like "Is there any evidence that X is directly connected to the case?" when the only evidence we had was that many years ago X worked in a building that today we found a body in. "Directly"? I think not. And even when the answer to a question was clear, the evidence required to back up the answer which two of the four documents that showed Y was in jail should we use to prove that Y was not an honest person? Could we use the documents that implied that Y was blackmailing his employer? UHS Hints was invaluable at this point, and the commentary ("Believe it or not, the answer to this question is yes.") made us feel a little better about not being able to answer the questions to the game's satisfaction.
Most mysteries I know start with a simple concept ("This person has been murdered"), widen out to many different pieces of evidence ("This person was involved in racecar driving, gambling, and had mob connections"), some of which get eliminated ("This person had no gambling debts and was on good terms with the mob."), narrowing suspicion ("This person was sleeping with another driver's wife."), until all the evidence that's relevant points directly at the solution. In the case of the Silver Earring, none of the evidence narrowed; instead it continued to spread out until there were so many paths and motives that the murderer or murderers could have had that we kept thinking there's going to be some final evidence that ties it all together. The final blow came when we were unexpectedly asked who was responsible for each of the deaths that occurred in the game, but we were not allowed access to our body of evidence. And it didn't even matter! You get shown the ending movie regardless of your answers.
And in the end, it turned out that Sherlock Holmes, the character we had been playing, was keeping some of his deductions from us! He had sniffed a suspected murder's hand while kissing it to verify that she couldn't have used the gun. He had eliminated one suspect early on and had secretly had him act suspicious in order to help flush out other suspects. Why, then did we have to continue investigating his involvement? And why did he lie to the police and say one day he wasn't interested in the inheritance and the next demand to have his share?
One final thing: I told my friends from the get-go that one character mention in passing was the key to the whole mystery. During the final exposition, it was revealed I was right. But during this entire time, we did absolutely no investigation into said character and he wasn't even shown on-screen until this final scene!
All in all, The Silver Earring is a frustrating, overly-complex game that may have worked in novel form (as it was originally intended), but in game form was simply out of control.
Labels: mystery, review, Secret of the Silver Earring, Sherlock Holmes, Wednesday Night Adventure Club
posted by Skott at 9:16 AM
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