Sherlock Holmes: The Silver Earring

I had played the most recent games of Sherlock Holmes, like Chapter One, Crimes and Punishments and Devíl's Daughter, they are all good games, but, like most of now a days games, they are easy. It's more of watching then playing the game.

Now this old fellow here, that is a really hard game. You really need to play paying attention to every detail, read all documentation and clues. Besides the old graphics, really good story and hard puzzles to solve (remind me the old DOS Games Era, but the game don't help you to find the right way, be ready to spend some time).

pros
✅ nice looking and detailed graphics which aged quite well
✅ character models and cutscenes looks decent
✅ there are nice variety and many complex, challenging puzzles
✅ two playable characters (Sherlock and Watson)
✅ soundtrack consist of some classical music masterpieces
✅ there is a map for fast travel
✅a well written, engaging and intriguing story about the murder of a wealthy man, whose murder was investigated by Holmes and Watson.
✅ puzzles and quizzes fun to solve
✅ all of the suspicious side characters in it have rich, full backgrounds. They are well developed, interesting, and believeable.
✅ decent length
cons
❌unresponsive, slow and frustrating character controls
❌the resolution is fixed at a 4:3 aspect ratio and can't be changed
❌awkward pathfinding
❌annoying stealth section
❌frustrating and timed maze section
❌there are no english subtitles in cut scenes
❌voice acting hit or miss
❌some pixel hunting
❌there are no steam achievements and cards
Overall, this is a decent and enjoyable old-school point-and-click adventure game with an engaging murder story. If you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories, don't miss the opportunity to play this game.

As far as a point and click game goes, this one is lucky to have Sherlock Holmes' name attached to it. The story is just okay but the unbearable stuff is the clunky gameplay. It doesn't help when there are some backtracking and time sensitive quests. It is an okay Sherlock's story if you are curious but you can safely skip it if you get this from The Sherlock Holmes Collection.

Loved it. Massive upgrade after the first game, and a lot of new features. The game feels exactly like reading a Sherlock Holmes story, even the kids and the brother were added. Fans of Sherlock would definitely like it and it's a good standalone detective game as well.

Once I figured out how the game worked, it was fun to collect evidence and read all the clues. The walk-through was extremely helpful and ultimately the story was complex and intriguing. It's not the smoothest game, I mean it is old and some things are not intuitive, but I did enjoy playing it. On to the next!

This game is much better than the Sherlock Holmes game that preceded it, Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy, although there are some pain points. Unlike Mystery of the Mummy, this game thankfully worked out of the box on Windows 11 for me. The music by default is quite loud and drowns out dialogue, but other than that I didn't need to change any settings, which was nice for a 20 year old game.
Another positive for this game is that it's a classic adventure game, affectionately called a "point & click", with many different characters to talk to and items to interact with as you command a character from fixed perspectives. Personally, I enjoy this type of adventure game much more than the first person hidden object kind of game that Mystery of the Mummy is. Each character is also voiced, which is nice since this is a whodunnit where you'll need to talk to every character, and many of them more than once after unearthing new information and clues. The voice acting is perfectly acceptable so long as you don't have any issues with hearing various British accents throughout.
Most of the puzzles are quite fun, although there were a couple that were quite difficult to figure out what they were going for, and I don't believe there's a hint system, either. I really enjoyed the aspect of the notebook throughout the game, too, as it automatically logs conversations and clues for you.. The main purpose of this is because after each day in-game you are quizzed on proving various statements in the case, and so you need to back up each statement with examples from character's dialogue, clues, and filed notes. The first day was kind of tricky to figure out what you needed to do here, but once I got the first day down I was looking forward to the next quizzes to test how well I was picking up the various clues and plot beats.
Some minor issues are if you're playing on a modern monitor size then the subtitles and text on filed notes will be quite small and difficult to read without leaning toward your screen a bit. There's also some slightly frustrating parts where you'll see an item in the environment but can't interact with it because you first need to progress to another room and/or interact with another item or speak to another character first. This game is also somewhat infamous for a stealth sequence that is quite difficult to get through because you can't really deduce what the line of sight is from the characters you're trying to avoid due to the fixed camera. I believe Full Throttle had a similar stealth sequence that was pretty tricky to navigate in 2D, so if you know what I'm talking about you have a decent idea of what to expect.
All in all, I would recommend this game for anyone that's a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and also if you're a fan of the point & click genre with a little bit of patience. I thought the mystery was quite good and the ending where everything and everyone's motivations are revealed is quite satisfying.

Early attempts via Frog Games to imitate the Sherlock Holmes franchise. Well, written. though dated, they have developed a system to record clues, conversations and track events through a crime scene that does justice to the original short stories of Doyle. One must pay attention to details, retrace steps on occasion to determine who committed the murder, and solve several mysteries. This is more than a point and click game, and to succeed you must keep your wits and observe all clues to be worthy to claim the nom de plume of "Sherlock Holmes."