Dealing with backlog: Frogwares bundle

So a while ago I bought the Frogware publisher bundles on Steam because I've really enjoyed their Sherlock Holmes games and decided I'd go through the bunch. 

1. Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy (2002). When I first started up this game it started as a small windowed mode. Didn't bother me much. I figured I'd have to play it in windowed since screens were smaller back then or it'd look hella pixelated. What did bother me though was that the cursor didn't work. It didn't respond well at all to mouse movements, which is kind of important in a point-and-click game. Found a guide on Steam on how to solve the issues. The guide was for Win 10 and I'm running Win 11, but I figured since they're similar enough it'd work. Went through all the steps and the game wouldn't launch at all. Undid the steps that related to the game launching wrong and only kept the steps that were supposed to fix the cursor. The game launched, but the cursor still didn't work. So this game was entirely unplayable. Shame. Trailer.

2. Journey to the Center of the Earth (2003). This is old. I forgot how long ago 2003 really was until I booted up the game. Man, are we spoiled today! FFS ARIANE WALK FASTER! The controls are alright, but the point-to-walk-here mechanic is a little iffy and it doesn't always make Ariane go where you think she will, and sometimes she's straight up blocking something you need to pick up and so you have to make her take a step or two in a direction that doesn't cause the entire perspective to shift. Uuuuugh -.-' The story in itself is cool, like a fanfiction sequel of Jules Verne's book of the same name. The voice acting is terrible across the board so I resorted to my tried and true tactic of reading the subtitles and then clicking so I'd hear as little of the voices as possible. Funny thing, though. I've never played this game before, but the graphics, the mechanics, the voice-acting and the sometimes infuriating puzzles made me feel all sorts of nostalgia for those old point-and-click adventures that I used to play as a kid :3 Recommend, but keep in mind that it's oooooooold and use a walkthrough. Trailer.

3. Sherlock Holmes: The Silver Earring (2004). I enjoyed this one. The quizzes at the end of each chapter forced you to pay attention to what was going on; what was being said and by whom and where and when; read through all the documents found etc etc. The case was quite "fun" and Sherlock's work table was fun too. Not many of the puzzles were too challenging and I liked that you had to use tools like a magnifying glass and a measuring tape several times and not just "look here" and "pick this up". The only thing that ruined it a little bit for me was the forest sequence. Kind of a labyrinth puzzle where you find your way through a forest with multiple winding paths, and since the game is old it's all pixelated and every frame looks frustratingly similar, add to that the fact that I have the absolute worst sense of direction IRL and you have a disaster. To make matters worse after I finally found my way through the forest I had to find my way back through the forest again... but with a timer this time. And I kept getting lost and running out of time and aaaaagh so much frustration! But apart from that little hiccup I had a good time with this game! Trailer.

4. Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (2007). I was looking forward to this. Partly because it can be played in first person view, which makes it seem more like a RPG imo, but also because of its Lovecraftian themes. Unfortunately it crashes whenever I try to use the map for fast-travelling, which means I can't switch locations, which means I can't progress the story. There is a remake/remaster of this coming next year so I guess I have to wait for that one. Trailer.

5. Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis (2007). It kept referencing The Awakened in the beginning, just rubbing it in that I couldn't play it! This game worked smoothly for the first half of the game. When I entered the second half suddenly I could no longer make a save or overwrite an already existing save. Just didn't work. Then the game crashed when I was chasing the thief through Buckingham Palace (not too far from the end of the game) and I lost hours of progress because the game couldn't be saved and there was no autosave. Brilliant! This game had terrible voice-acting, terrible acting overall tbh,  but the story was quite fun and Holmes got to make use of every talent in his arsenal while Watson got to stand around being dumb for the entirety of the game. What happened to useful Watson from The Silver Earring? I had a really good time with this one up until the crash. There's something very Victorian and romantic about a genius cat-burglar and the equally genius detective. Loved it. I also have a nagging feeling I've played this somewhere before or watched a playthrough. I definitely remember the Rosetta stone getting stolen and Queen Victoria getting snogged... Trailer.

6. Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet (2008). So this one is a very little one developed under their sub-studio Waterlily. It has no voice-lines, but the same character models as the previous Sherlock Holmes games. This is a very straight-forward point-and-click game with some infuriating puzzles popping up every now and then. Especially the one where you had to get more squares than the computer... GAH! Anyway, this has extremely straight-forward gameplay, with a very simplistic story, and if this game was made today it would've been a mobile game, and it would've been pretty well suited as a mobile game. Trailer.

7. Dracula: Origin (2008). It was only after I finished this game that I realized that their other Dracula game that I played several years ago was set up as a direct sequel to this one. Lol. Oh well. This game draws heavily from the Bram Stoker book, except Dracula is prettier than he has any business to be (especially considering the game is 14 years old). Van Helsing's voice actor has a strange sort of accent that I can't really place. I think they meant for it to be Dutch, but it sounds more Eastern European in places. No infuriating puzzles this time around and the whole thing seemed pretty simple. Like a lot of vampire stuff it fails to be inspiring or engaging. Usually these things are too edgy or just a complete boring copy of the (let's face it) boring book that is Dracula. That Cthulhu Mythos reference made me chuckle though! Nyarlathotep :3 Trailer.

8. Department 42: The Mystery of the Nine (2009). Also a Waterlily game and a full-on classic Hidden Object game. Unfortunately it's also very shallow. As Artifex Mundi keeps proving, Hidden Object games don't have to be shallow. There could be so much more to this. But the story is basically that you work for a federal bureau that keeps track of supernatural artefacts. Nine of them were kept in a mansion, but when the mansion burned down the artefacts disappeared and they wreak havoc to people who end up with them. So you're tasked with finding them. Very few puzzles were frustrating this time around, some parts of the Hidden Object screens were completely unfair and some had hitboxes completely to hell, but it worked out in the end. I did appreciate the nod to Sherlock Holmes. Trailer.

9. Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper (2009).

10. Secret Mission: The Forgotten Island (2011). This was another classic Hidden Object game but so shallow and so easy. Nothing even moderately hard on it, no frustrations to make it memorable, no unfair hidden objects... This game was just a disappointment. Nothing memorable about it at all. Trailer.

11. Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles (2011).

12. Dracula: Love Kills (2011).

13. The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (2012).

14. Journey to the Heart of Gaia (2012). This one was good. Classic point-and-click game with a very cute fantasy setting and story. I had a good time with this one. At this point it's getting pretty obvious they're using the same puzzles for every single game, but they're mainly good puzzles so who can blame them. I had a good time with this one to be honest! And voice-acting really does make a whole lot of difference, even if it's pretty bad. Department 42 and Secret Mission had no voice-acting at all, but this one did and it made all the difference! Trailer.

15. Magrunner: Dark Pulse (2013). This one was probably the one I looked forward to the least out of all of the games. It looked like a Portal knock-off and I knew it would frustrating. I started the game and liked the story setup well enough. The whole story and characters and the glimpses of society reminded me of Shadowrun, but with mutants instead of supernaturals. I was cautiously optimistic. The fist few puzzles were simple enough. Then we got to one of the last introductory puzzles and everything was going well enough, until I got to a point where I was somehow going to jump off a cube while also keeping the cube with me, and I just couldn't make it work. Tried on my own - didn't work. Tried with a guide - didn't work. Tried on my own some more - still couldn't make it work. When I had spent 30 minutes on that one puzzle out of my total 1 hour playtime I decided to fuck it and drop the game. I don't enjoy doing the same thing over and over and not feel like I make any progress. Trailer.

16. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (2014). The Sherlock games keep getting better. Testament was really good, but this one was way better and pretty much on par with Devil's Daughter. This is a classic Sherlock Holmes game with much the same formula as they've used since Jack the Ripper with the deduction board and everything. The biggest difference is that they've used a much better engine for this game and so everything is pretty as hell. Including Sherlock. Couldn't stop looking at him o_o This is like an anthology game. There are six cases in this game that Sherlock solves consecutively. My favourite was probably Blood Bath because it almost seemed like an adventure game at times, but Riddle on the Rails was a lot of fun too. Trailer.

17. Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter (2016).

18. The Sinking City (2019). I loved this game. So much. It gets its own post, because damn.

19. Sherlock Holmes Chapter One (2021). After all those Sherlock Holmes games they decided to restart the entire series. And they did it so well ♥ I had a lot of fun playing this game. The combat was much improved from The Sinking City. The deduction board was straight out of Crimes and Punishments. Had a lot of fun playing around with costumes and makeup. Really didn't like Jon though. This entire game takes place before Sherlock meets Watson, so it's a very different Jon. The story was heartbreaking. A lot of the cases were really good. I liked how the clue-collecting worked. Only thing I wish they'd done differently was to make it more obvious where to pick up cases/missions. Had to Google when and where they'd show up so I could make sure to do everything. I loved playing as a young Sherlock who's still figuring out himself and his trade it was a lot of fun. When's chapter two? Trailer.