Review by: Jeff McAllister

Sherlock Holmes has appeared just about everywhere since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the doping, malapert and authoritative detective way back in 1886. After numerous PC titles, it was only a matter of time before he appeared on the Xbox 360 and what better way to make a first impression than to take on one of the world’s most infamous serial killers?

Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper follows the astute detective as he and Watson are bemoaning the mundane cases thrown their way when they catch wind of the murder of a prostitute in Whitechapel. Belittling the police’s ineptitude to handle the case themselves, Holmes and Watson make for Whitechapel to get their hands dirty and try to figure out just who the person responsible is and end up getting a little deeper than either expected in the process.

The game follows a point and click design in which you control both Holmes and Watson at different times during the game. Control of the characters can be in either third or first person views, making the search for clues easier at times and being able to easily see your surrounding environment at others. During the course of the game, you won’t visit too many places but you will find yourself returning to the same police station or boarding house numerous times. As you move from street to street in third person view, the static camera makes going from screen to screen quite the exercise in frustration as the direction you are running changes from one to another. Frogwares could have extended the gameplay time by forcing you to hoof it to each destination each time, but thankfully the game has a fast travel system that is accessible through the map to make travel from one side of town to the other as simple as pressing a button.

When you aren’t searching the streets for clues or doing one of the many, many fetch quests, you’ll be solving puzzles; some of the most mind boggling puzzles I’ve ever come across in a game. While most of the puzzles have the answers found in previous dialogues you have had with folks of the town - which are thankfully kept in a record– or in clues near the puzzle itself, there is one puzzle in the game where you need to open the combination on a police man’s ledger, the first puzzle of the game in fact. There was no clue given whatsoever as to what the answer may be and it was simple trial and error to get the correct combination of numbers. Another time, Holmes needs to use a tarpaulin to force open a locked door. Why one would imagine how or why to do that defies logic. Sherlock may be the greatest detective, I however, am not.

As you and your partner collect clues from around the town, you will come across the crime scenes of where Jack’s victims were found. You need to search the area for clues – which include some pretty gruesome descriptions – and try to piece together how things went down. Once all the clues from the scene are gathered, a deduction board is brought up and the clues placed on it. One leading to the next until Holmes arrives at his deductions. There isn’t much to doing this since if you mess up on the choices during the deduction process, you can simply change the multiple choice option until the final deduction is outlined in green, showing that it is correct.