I saw some screenshots of Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One on tumblr that looked interesting, and I decided to buy it. However it was mad expensive and Sherlock Holmes: Crime and Punishment was on sale, so I got that instead. My problem with a lot of investigative games is there are often times the player knows the solution, but has to go through the route the developers want. Or it's impossible to figure out and has to just try every option until something works. Games like Ace Attorney or L.A. Noire are good examples of that.

Crime and Punishment didn't really fall under that, perhaps because it was so damned easy. Literally everything can be skipped. Can't figure this puzzle out? Skip it. Don't know what you're supposed to say to a dude? Skip that. Hell, at the end you can press a button to see if your conclusion was right or not. And if you don't want to skip something, the game will literally take your hand and start pointing to what you're supposed to do. For example, Sherlock has a "investigation mode," which lets him see clues that most people cannot. Instead of you walking around with this mode on, trying to ascertain if you see anything (the Arkham games would have you do this), the game would pull up animations to indicate you need to use it in a certain location, so there's no real effort on the player's part.

Still, if you go through the motions, I find the cases to be interesting with some quite difficult to figure out. For example, in the case of the missing train, I literally could not tell whether it was the Mexicans or the Chileans and just guessed. Plus the method of deducing—changing suppositions in the Mind Palace, which looks like brain cells—was a nice design.

Overall, I think it was a good albeit quick game. Literally finished it in two days. If you've got some time, I recommend it.