Beware Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy isn’t a brand new game, but instead a re-release as a downloadable game as opposed to boxed software. It’s disappointing to see a PC game called “Exclusive” when it came out in 2002 as Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of the Mummy! It felt like the game publisher deceived us for the sakes of sales thinking no one would bother to search elsewhere.

The game, a massive download at 451 MB, sunk further when I realized it was in 3D. I hadn’t played for five minutes before the 3D hurt my eyes. My eyes are sensitive to motions like those in a 3D game. Plus, outdated graphics most likely escalated the discomfort. So I enlisted family members to help with the game.

The story revolves around the disappearance of Lord Montcalfe, an Egyptian archaeologist. The game throws you to the hounds of Baskerville by offering no help to get started and little direction throughout.

We hadn’t played the adventure game long before we hit a roadblock. No one wanted to play the sliding puzzle mini-game. After 20 minutes of messing with the puzzle, we conquered it and hoped to never play it again. Darn it! It came back!

The game play felt rough, requiring too much effort to move around and interact. Some of the puzzles challenged us and we felt pride as soon as we solved them. However, these puzzles didn’t return soon enough to keep us revving. The constant moving of the mouse over every pixel of the screen to find objects drove us crazy, but we kept pushing in hopes the game would turn around.

Instead, we faced more mind numbing games, where felt like the librarian who moves the books around until they are all in the right place, just to find a single object or the wine connoisseur and gather all the wines and get them in the right order on an empty shelf just to reveal … a slider puzzle.

We appreciate a good Sherlock Holmes mystery, but not in this game. It didn’t compel us to enjoy playing the role of the infamous detective. We might like the game, however, if you plug the puzzles in a modern version of the game without the clunky graphics and without putting so much effort to accomplish simple task.

While Batman could survive without Robin in the movies, Sherlock Holmes isn’t the same without Dr. Watson. Watson offers insight and humor to counter Holmes serious and impersonal demeanor. The game’s advertisement says, “Interact with Watson,” but he makes a cameo appearance instead of acts as a co-star.

Why any developer would recapture this old boxed PC game in downloadable format is beyond us. Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy won’t please fans of Sherlock Holmes or adventure games unless the last adventure game played was from the 1990s.

Free download of Sherlock Holmes

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• 600MHz or faster Processor
• 128MB RAM

[tags]Meryl K. Evans,games[/tags]