"Elementary, dear Watson; It's a cult of bloodthirsty, amoral sociopaths intent on world domination and the utter destruction of all that is good and proper! Be a good chap and fetch my violin and cocaine solution, won't you? We've got a gigantic hell-squid to stop!"

OK, so Holmes doesn't exactly come out and say that at any point during Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, but I kept expecting him to. Sadly, Holmes maintains his veddy veddy British composure throughout most of the game, exactly as he should.

I think that's what I liked best about The Awakened; the folks at Frogwares didn't compromise on either the Holmes stories or the Cthulhu mythos. The game makes you play Sherlock Holmes whether you want to or not. Holmes doesn't do intuition. Holmes doesn't do hunches. What Holmes does do is collect evidence, interview people, and analyze the evidence he collects. This makes The Awakened a very linear game. You cannot progress at all until you've found all the clues needed to reach a conclusion. That conclusion, in turn, inevitably points to your next destination. This style of game play may annoy people whose minds don't work that way - myself included! - but that's how the Great Detective works.

As with the Holmes elements of the story, no punches are pulled at all with the Mythos elements or with the culture and prejudices of the late 1800's. This game is rated 'M' for good reason. While some players might find the depictions of gore disturbing, they didn't bother me as much as the historically accurate depictions of "medical treatments for mental illness" shown in a chapter that takes place at a sanitarium. The fact that that chapter was so disturbing is, again, a credit to the Frogwares team.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened does have a fair number of issues and areas that could use improvement, but on the whole there's nothing that could be called game breaking. There are some very long cut scenes full of dry discussion between Holmes and Watson, for instance. The cut scenes are not badly done or anything; they're just very long and it's difficult to digest them and keep track of all the minutia being discussed. Fortunately, all the conversations are kept in your notebook so you can go back and review them if needed.

The atmosphere and environment are very nicely done and a lot of effort appears to have been put in to creating a convincing world. However, most of the character models have minimal movements and few if any facial expressions. I know most of the characters are supposed to be (or at least act) British, but this goes beyond that. Sometimes, it feels like you're exploring a world full of clothes mannequins. It would be less of an issue if one of them were Kim Cattrall, but, sadly, that's not the case.

It's possible to save your game at any time, which is always a big plus in my book. I got to the point of saving right after finding the last clue during an investigation of a scene. Sometimes, investigating a scene comes down to sweeping every pixel on the screen looking for something you missed, which can take quite some time. In those cases, saving as you find something can be very useful.

One component of the game which I did not care for at all was the periodic player input scenes. Typically, Holmes and Watson would review what they had found and then decide where to go or what to do next. The trick is that the player has to review every piece of information obtained and, based on that, type an answer into the game. That wouldn't be so bad by itself, but there is no apparent consequence for incorrect guesses. If there's no consequence for guessing wrong, success is a matter of time rather than reasoning skills. Presenting a screen with multiple answers would make these tasks go faster and be just as dangerous.

Occasionally, Holmes also makes extreme leaps of logic that leave players spinning in the dust, utterly bewildered. I was willing at first to put it down to preserving the Holmsian atmosphere, but after the second or third time it just gets annoying. I love the Holmes atmosphere and environment, but his literary ability to deduce conclusions from detailed observations is one few players have the ability to emulate. Now, I know he's Sherlock Holmes and all that, but I really would have enjoyed a narration or something that talked about the significance of these discoveries and what they mean to the investigation as they are discovered. That way, when Holmes comes up with his amazing triumphs of deductive reasoning, the player doesn't feel as blindsided as poor Watson.

Speaking of Holmes minutia, I have to say I didn't care for Frogwares' decision to place the game after Holmes and Moriarty's fight at the Reichenbach Falls. I don't want to go into detail about how this is revealed as it could be considered a spoiler. It's a small complaint, but unless you are a Holmes purist, don't worry about it. It concerns one minor scene in the game that has nothing to do with the overall plot. Without giving anything away, I will say that the reason the scene exists should be fairly obvious by its conclusion.

Overall, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is both a great Sherlock Holmes game and a great Cthulhu Mythos story. If the Great Detective and the Great Old Ones cross paths again, I'd prefer to see more suspense and less gore, but as long as the story and presentation are as solid as they were in this offering, I won't quibble a bit.