Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring

As Much As we know the genre is dead, if you're old enough you may still yearn for the halcyon days of point-and-click heros Threepwood and Knight. As such, any chance to rejuvenate the adventure genre is still welcome, even one as unlikely as Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Silver Earring, Frogwares' second outing featuring the super-sleuth.

Alternating between the smacked-up Holmes and the stuffy Dr. Watson, the game challenges you to solve the murder of construction tycoon Melvyn Bromsby, using tried and abandoned point-and-click techniques. Holmes lovers will be chuffed to see cameos from Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft and Baker Street irregular Wiggins as you question witnesses and get quizzed on your findings. The rest of us will no doubt shrug and make grunting noises.

Surprisingly, The Silver Earring looks and sounds fairly good, with convincing Victorian locations and competently crafted 3D models. The animation and lip-synching aren't up to much, but the classical score fits the quintessentially British goings-on perfectly, as does some surprisingly amusing and well-acted dialogue. Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets. The plot is hackneyed, the pacing painful, the pathfinding clunky, the puzzles obscure and the point-and-click interface unintuitive. But hey, we're talking graphic adventures here. Dedicated aficionados of the genre will lap it up. Everyone else would be well advised to leave this case unsolved.