Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels
By Bob Bates
Published by Infocom
Release Year: 1987
Version Played: Apple IIe
While getting the publishing information for the game from CASA, I noticed two previous players had left comments on the game. Richard Bos said, "True, and unlike so many adventures set in 'London', this one's topography actually works out as London's. So many games get that wrong, which is jarring if you've been there and love the city. Sherlock gets it right, which is pleasant." I resisted responding with "Ooh la la! Look at Mr. Fancy here! Been to London and knows it so well a stupid fucking text game's topography can ruin the entire experience for him! What a fucking twat!" But I didn't resist typing that response here and including Dick's name so that if he ever Googles himself, maybe he'll see my reply! Well, if he ever does do that and continues reading past the part where he felt insulted, I should probably tell him I'm fucking joking. It's a fucking joke, man. Calm down! Don't try to find out where I live so you can punch me in the face! Don't you think I get punched in the face enough with this kind of attitude?! I was just being whimsical! Oh, sure, at your expense! But not really at your expense, right?! If it were really at your expense, I'd have commented on CASA! I know you're never actually going to see this and get your bloody Teaboo feelings hurt! Unless you're the kind of prat who does indeed Google themselves.
Just a second! Now I want to Google "Grunion Guy"!
Wow! The second hit is for the text adventure game I wrote, Trollslayer. Other than that...um...sheesh. I've left my scat all over the Internet. This is kind of embarrassing. Don't bother Googling my name. Egads.
Okay, I'm ready to talk about this game now! If the game is a treasure hunt and I just need to find the various crown jewels, I'll probably enjoy the game. If it's a mystery where I have to question suspects to figure out clues before I can call Scotland Yard to come and arrest the culprit, I probably won't enjoy the game. If I can fuck Sherlock Holmes as Doctor Watson, I'll just stop playing and consider the game won because how can it get any better than that?
Oh yeah! You play as Doctor Watson because Sherlock Holmes is a lazy bastard who just wants to sit around smoking opium and pretending he's smarter than Moriarty. I've never read a Sherlock Holmes mystery because I have better things to do with my life. Okay, yes, I did recently just reread nine of the Xanth novels so let me amend my previous statement. "I have different stupid fucking things to waste my precious finite life on." Are you happy now? Because I'm not! Thanks for reminding me I'm going to die, jerko.
I'm glad I have this blog so I can pretend I'm not having arguments inside my own head with myself because I'm arguing with people on the Internet!
By Bob Bates
Published by Infocom
Release Year: 1987
Version Played: Apple IIe
While getting the publishing information for the game from CASA, I noticed two previous players had left comments on the game. Richard Bos said, "True, and unlike so many adventures set in 'London', this one's topography actually works out as London's. So many games get that wrong, which is jarring if you've been there and love the city. Sherlock gets it right, which is pleasant." I resisted responding with "Ooh la la! Look at Mr. Fancy here! Been to London and knows it so well a stupid fucking text game's topography can ruin the entire experience for him! What a fucking twat!" But I didn't resist typing that response here and including Dick's name so that if he ever Googles himself, maybe he'll see my reply! Well, if he ever does do that and continues reading past the part where he felt insulted, I should probably tell him I'm fucking joking. It's a fucking joke, man. Calm down! Don't try to find out where I live so you can punch me in the face! Don't you think I get punched in the face enough with this kind of attitude?! I was just being whimsical! Oh, sure, at your expense! But not really at your expense, right?! If it were really at your expense, I'd have commented on CASA! I know you're never actually going to see this and get your bloody Teaboo feelings hurt! Unless you're the kind of prat who does indeed Google themselves.
Just a second! Now I want to Google "Grunion Guy"!
Wow! The second hit is for the text adventure game I wrote, Trollslayer. Other than that...um...sheesh. I've left my scat all over the Internet. This is kind of embarrassing. Don't bother Googling my name. Egads.
Okay, I'm ready to talk about this game now! If the game is a treasure hunt and I just need to find the various crown jewels, I'll probably enjoy the game. If it's a mystery where I have to question suspects to figure out clues before I can call Scotland Yard to come and arrest the culprit, I probably won't enjoy the game. If I can fuck Sherlock Holmes as Doctor Watson, I'll just stop playing and consider the game won because how can it get any better than that?
Oh yeah! You play as Doctor Watson because Sherlock Holmes is a lazy bastard who just wants to sit around smoking opium and pretending he's smarter than Moriarty. I've never read a Sherlock Holmes mystery because I have better things to do with my life. Okay, yes, I did recently just reread nine of the Xanth novels so let me amend my previous statement. "I have different stupid fucking things to waste my precious finite life on." Are you happy now? Because I'm not! Thanks for reminding me I'm going to die, jerko.
I'm glad I have this blog so I can pretend I'm not having arguments inside my own head with myself because I'm arguing with people on the Internet!
Solving my first puzzle while simultaneously being told I have a fat head.
I don't have high hopes for this game if the first puzzle has Doctor Watson finding the stethoscope he stored inside of his hat. I'd better make sure I don't have any other hidden objects on my body which I'll need later.
Regular readers of my blog might be starting to suspect that I have an infatuation with hiding things inside my asshole. But I ask, "How many text adventures have you won, hunh?!"
I knock on the door to Holmes' flat and his housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, lets me in. She's quite worried about Sherlock because he's apparently stopped eating and drinking and smoking opium. But since he's currently indisposed, maybe there's a little time for some hanky-panky!
This answer is amusing but it doesn't bode well for getting my dick inside Sherlock Holmes.
I find Holmes upstairs staring at a vial and a syringe. He's sickly and almost certainly going through withdrawal. Sure, he'll probably tell me he's worried that Moriarty finally laid a trap too ingenious for even Holmes to avoid. But more likely, he just lost his opium source to Lestrade's handcuffs and he's freaking the fuck out about where he's going to get his next fix. Fucking hell. Do I really want to work with this bastard anymore? Holmes' gun lies on the mantle so, I mean, why not, right?
Lestrade gets me.
Instead of killing Holmes (or Mrs. Hudson), I wave the newspaper in his face and he lights up over some news about London Tower being closed. He then throws his opium into the fireplace and perks up, ready to solve the riddle of the crown jewels! Some government official meets with us, gives us some riddles, and takes off. Holmes gets dressed and tells me he'll wait outside while I go about picking up all of the things he's forgotten to take with him, like his pipe and magnifying glass. It seems most of the points I earned are from doing grunt work like an undervalued and barely thought about sidekick.
Now imagine between the previous paragraph and this one there's a gif of the sun rising and setting about three hundred times because it's basically a year later! No, I didn't stop playing the game immediately after leaving 221B Baker Street. And also no, I haven't been playing the game for a full year.
On a side note, who lived in 221A Baker Street? I'm sure Author Conan Doyle covered it in one of his boring Sherlock Holmes books.
Back to the front note, here's a problem with reviewing text adventure games: what do I do when I get stuck? How long do I let a review languish because I'm stuck on a problem? Do I look up a hint immediately just to get the review over with or do I power on for weeks unable to figure out how the author put together an unfair puzzle to extend the length of the game? Well as you may have seen in most of my previous reviews, I'll look up a hint in a day or two. I give myself enough time outside of the game world to let my mind percolate and then if nothing came to me when I return, I'll look up the hint, see how close I was to solving it (or, more likely, not close at all, thank you very much Lawrence Creighton), and then rant about how terrible the game was, blaming the author for my failure of imagination.
But Infocom games are special! I really want to be able to beat as many of these games as I can without hints. I know it's an impossible task but I previously beat both Border Zone and Enchanter without hints so why not all of them?! Okay, Enchanter definitely needs to be "beat with an asterisk" since I had read the solutions over thirty years ago. But if you've read any of my comic book reviews, you'll know my memory is pretty fucking horrid. But I feel like Enchanter's puzzles were so fair that there's a pretty good chance I could have beaten that game as an adult without remembering clues from my boring childhood of reading the solutions to text adventure games that I didn't own.
So why a year pause in playing this game? Well, I'd managed to gain possession of three of the four initial gems whose locations were clued by the riddles given to Holmes and Watson by the government guy. The only one I couldn't get was the opal hidden in the clump of moss underneath the London Bridge. Every time I knocked it down, it fell into the Thames and sunk immediately. I tried throwing various things at it but could never catch it before it sank. I tried hitting it with the oar. I tried standing up in the boat. I tried getting Holmes to hit the moss so I could catch it. I tried draping my coat across the Thames to catch it before the coat sank. In the end, I decided to leave the game be and think on it. So I did. And I never came back.
But this week, I finally did come back! At this point, having tried a bunch of the same solutions again, I decided, as I thought might be the case a year ago, that the next problem I needed to solve was the one which needed the supplementary materials (or Feelies) that came with the game. Infocom's form of copy protection was to make one puzzle unsolvable without the Feelies. I thought maybe I just hadn't gone to a location that could only be reached by cab but was mentioned on the map that came with the game. That didn't work. I thought maybe the password to the Tower of London was hidden in the newspaper that came with the game. That really didn't work because the newspaper is super long and boring. Which was super clever on Infocom's part because by the time I got to the section that listed the high tides of the Thames, I was too bored to notice or realize that that was the solution. You just had to wait until high tide so you could reach up and simply grab the moss. What also makes this solution so clever is that there's only a short time around high tide when you can grab the moss, so you're unlikely to get it by accident. And when you are under the bridge trying to get the moss, you have to keep reloading your game when the opal falls in the Thames. So time isn't going to pass at all while playing around for solutions. And you're not likely to wander around wasting time and head back to the bridge after you found nothing, giving you another random chance at being their for high tide. No, of course not since it's a limited time game! You'll just restore your previous save in the boat under the London Bridge and start throwing shit at the moss again in frustration.
Being fairly convinced that I needed the opal to get in the bank, and reasonably sure that the Tower of London's password would be revealed after that, I figured the opal problem was the copy protection problem and I wasn't going to figure it out by constantly scanning the PDF versions of the most boring Feelies in any Infocom game ever. So I looked up the hint. Luckily in this game, the Invisiclues are built right in. And so I learned I should have actually read the entire newspaper instead of scanning a few entries and thinking, "This fucking sucks."
After getting the hint, I believe I finished the game in an hour or so. Everything was pretty linear at that point and the final confrontation with Professor Moriarty simply takes a number of tries to figure out what you can and can't do. And Sherlock basically tells you the way to solve the puzzle early in the game when you ask him about his ampoule of ether; he tells you to "keep it under your hat."
Now imagine between the previous paragraph and this one there's a gif of the sun rising and setting about three hundred times because it's basically a year later! No, I didn't stop playing the game immediately after leaving 221B Baker Street. And also no, I haven't been playing the game for a full year.
On a side note, who lived in 221A Baker Street? I'm sure Author Conan Doyle covered it in one of his boring Sherlock Holmes books.
Back to the front note, here's a problem with reviewing text adventure games: what do I do when I get stuck? How long do I let a review languish because I'm stuck on a problem? Do I look up a hint immediately just to get the review over with or do I power on for weeks unable to figure out how the author put together an unfair puzzle to extend the length of the game? Well as you may have seen in most of my previous reviews, I'll look up a hint in a day or two. I give myself enough time outside of the game world to let my mind percolate and then if nothing came to me when I return, I'll look up the hint, see how close I was to solving it (or, more likely, not close at all, thank you very much Lawrence Creighton), and then rant about how terrible the game was, blaming the author for my failure of imagination.
But Infocom games are special! I really want to be able to beat as many of these games as I can without hints. I know it's an impossible task but I previously beat both Border Zone and Enchanter without hints so why not all of them?! Okay, Enchanter definitely needs to be "beat with an asterisk" since I had read the solutions over thirty years ago. But if you've read any of my comic book reviews, you'll know my memory is pretty fucking horrid. But I feel like Enchanter's puzzles were so fair that there's a pretty good chance I could have beaten that game as an adult without remembering clues from my boring childhood of reading the solutions to text adventure games that I didn't own.
So why a year pause in playing this game? Well, I'd managed to gain possession of three of the four initial gems whose locations were clued by the riddles given to Holmes and Watson by the government guy. The only one I couldn't get was the opal hidden in the clump of moss underneath the London Bridge. Every time I knocked it down, it fell into the Thames and sunk immediately. I tried throwing various things at it but could never catch it before it sank. I tried hitting it with the oar. I tried standing up in the boat. I tried getting Holmes to hit the moss so I could catch it. I tried draping my coat across the Thames to catch it before the coat sank. In the end, I decided to leave the game be and think on it. So I did. And I never came back.
But this week, I finally did come back! At this point, having tried a bunch of the same solutions again, I decided, as I thought might be the case a year ago, that the next problem I needed to solve was the one which needed the supplementary materials (or Feelies) that came with the game. Infocom's form of copy protection was to make one puzzle unsolvable without the Feelies. I thought maybe I just hadn't gone to a location that could only be reached by cab but was mentioned on the map that came with the game. That didn't work. I thought maybe the password to the Tower of London was hidden in the newspaper that came with the game. That really didn't work because the newspaper is super long and boring. Which was super clever on Infocom's part because by the time I got to the section that listed the high tides of the Thames, I was too bored to notice or realize that that was the solution. You just had to wait until high tide so you could reach up and simply grab the moss. What also makes this solution so clever is that there's only a short time around high tide when you can grab the moss, so you're unlikely to get it by accident. And when you are under the bridge trying to get the moss, you have to keep reloading your game when the opal falls in the Thames. So time isn't going to pass at all while playing around for solutions. And you're not likely to wander around wasting time and head back to the bridge after you found nothing, giving you another random chance at being their for high tide. No, of course not since it's a limited time game! You'll just restore your previous save in the boat under the London Bridge and start throwing shit at the moss again in frustration.
Being fairly convinced that I needed the opal to get in the bank, and reasonably sure that the Tower of London's password would be revealed after that, I figured the opal problem was the copy protection problem and I wasn't going to figure it out by constantly scanning the PDF versions of the most boring Feelies in any Infocom game ever. So I looked up the hint. Luckily in this game, the Invisiclues are built right in. And so I learned I should have actually read the entire newspaper instead of scanning a few entries and thinking, "This fucking sucks."
After getting the hint, I believe I finished the game in an hour or so. Everything was pretty linear at that point and the final confrontation with Professor Moriarty simply takes a number of tries to figure out what you can and can't do. And Sherlock basically tells you the way to solve the puzzle early in the game when you ask him about his ampoule of ether; he tells you to "keep it under your hat."
The winning screen. Proof I completed the game but not proof that I didn't cheat. Which I didn't do. Except for that stupid tide clue that expected you to read that boring fucking paper.
Overall, the game wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I was expecting to solve a mystery and I hate text adventures which expect me to solve a mystery. It's why I won't be playing Deadline or The Witness. But this game was really just a scavenger hunt where the list of clues were riddles to be solved. To be fair, you didn't even need to solve the riddles. Even without any of the clues, you'd eventually map the entirety of the game and accidentally discover every gem. And it's not like the time limit forces you to rush. When I was ready to meet Moriarty, I had to wait around outside of his sleazy bar for more than 24 hours! And that was after having to wait half a day for the high tide! I must have missed the den of iniquity where you could spend most of the game rutting with prostitutes while Holmes stands nearby saying, "You must draw your own inferences, Watson," and then winking lewdly.
I'd have to say all of the puzzles were particularly fair because I solved them all. Except that one that wasn't fair but still fair in the Infocom copyright protection way. I knew a puzzle would rely on the Feelies! I just couldn't be bothered to deal with this game's shit Feelies. Even the part where you did rubbings in Westminster Abbey after which you had to discover the invisible clues on the paper must have been fair because I figured it out without even needing the hint from the museum. I only got the hint later when I couldn't figure out how to get the opal and realized the museum was a new location. That was a pretty satisfying puzzle because you get to tell an old man to shut the fuck up. That's one of my favorite kinds of puzzles because I didn't figure it out by logic; I figured it out from pure frustration. It's like when I couldn't get past the sleeping bear in Scott Adams Adventure when I was a kid and out of pure frustration typed, "Screw bear!" The response was "The bear is so startled it falls off the ledge." I think I stared dumbfounded at the television (I played it on my Vic-20) for five minutes and then burst into laughter. Even Leisure Suit Larry never resorted to bestiality for a puzzle's solution.
My favorite part of the game was dunking the urchin Wiggins into a keg of ancient wine. I suppose it was more like commanding him to get in which he did. That's probably even more humiliating. But he did say he'd do anything for Mr. Holmes! He's lucky I was done trying to kiss things after being told a dozen times previously that I was too horny for the Victorian era.
SCORES
Game Title: I suppose it had to be called Sherlock so the Sherlock Holmes fans would purchase it but Sherlock doesn't do much. He says it's because the only way to thwart Moriarty is to not think like Sherlock Holmes but I expect he's still fucked up on opium. The Riddle of the Crown Jewels might be too accurate because the game is half riddles and half crown jewels. The other half of the game is trying to kiss everybody.
Puzzles: They were all pretty fair. The gist of how to solve most of them was usually evident and then it was just a matter of trial and error to figure out the correct solution (okay, so maybe I didn't immediately think "I need to rent a homing pigeon!" when I saw the ruby in Admiral Nelson's eye. But eventually it all comes together). Except for the puzzle where the solution was "read this super boring newspaper where the bit you need is about three-quarters of the way through which you'll either never get too because the rest is so boring or by the time you do get to it, you're not paying attention anymore." In a way, it was the most clever puzzle of them all! Two other puzzles relied on reading the example gameplay in the manual because they teach you how to summon the cab and how to haggle. Those are more fair because the example puzzle was short and interesting rather than long and tedious. One of the puzzles was knocking a bung out of a bunghole which allowed me to cackle like Beavis for five full minutes. I shot it with a pistol instead of using the mace because I was a reckless maverick who totally didn't try to take advantage of Wiggins in the Tower of London dungeon. Who's going to believe a street urchin over a wealthy and famous doctor?! I mean, as long as they don't read my other text adventure reviews where I try to fuck every NPC I encounter.
Gameplay: It plays exactly as you'd expect an Infocom game to play except with less descriptive areas and less descriptive objects and no Elvish sword. It has a time limit but the time limit barely matters (except for knowing when the high tide is in). Technically, Watson remains awake for forty-eight hours before solving the case. Except for the brief nap he gets after being blackjacked outside the bank when Holmes is kidnapped. While it seems like this game should be about solving a mystery, it's just a hunt for a bunch of gems. This game could easily have been renamed Batman: The Riddler Hid Some Crown Jewels.
Graphics: It's an Infocom game! Doesn't that speak for itself?! How old are you that you don't know Infocom games don't have graphics?! Oh, don't give me any of that later stuff where they tried to add graphics! If you were old enough to know Infocom games didn't have graphics, you'd be old enough to hold the opinion that those later games with graphics weren't really Infocom games! You don't get knowledge like that from Wikipedia!
Concept: I suppose for companies that want an instant fan base for their merchandise, it's a great concept to use a famous literary character. But since Bob Bates chose to write a game that was in actuality a treasure hunt instead of a mystery, couldn't he have used a character that was in the public domain at the time?! Wouldn't Infocom have saved a bunch of money if they'd just made Gulliver: The Riddle of the Houyhnhnms Hay Bales?
Fun Time: The amount of time I spent playing the game minus the amount of time I kept knocking the opal into the Thames was probably how much of the time I was having fun. Since there was an entire year between my playing the first half of the game and the second half, I can't even remember how much time I spent on it. After getting the clue for the high tide, I don't think I spent more than an hour working through the Bank of England, the Tower of London, and the endgame with Moriarty. But before that, I probably spent four or five hours? Probably an hour or two on Westminster Abbey, an hour at Madame Tussaud's, an hour exploring London, and an hour split between Big Ben and Trafalgar Square. That seems about right! And I wasn't really bored of the game until that damned clump of moss and it's infernal need to keep falling into the Thames, taking the opal with it.
I'd have to say all of the puzzles were particularly fair because I solved them all. Except that one that wasn't fair but still fair in the Infocom copyright protection way. I knew a puzzle would rely on the Feelies! I just couldn't be bothered to deal with this game's shit Feelies. Even the part where you did rubbings in Westminster Abbey after which you had to discover the invisible clues on the paper must have been fair because I figured it out without even needing the hint from the museum. I only got the hint later when I couldn't figure out how to get the opal and realized the museum was a new location. That was a pretty satisfying puzzle because you get to tell an old man to shut the fuck up. That's one of my favorite kinds of puzzles because I didn't figure it out by logic; I figured it out from pure frustration. It's like when I couldn't get past the sleeping bear in Scott Adams Adventure when I was a kid and out of pure frustration typed, "Screw bear!" The response was "The bear is so startled it falls off the ledge." I think I stared dumbfounded at the television (I played it on my Vic-20) for five minutes and then burst into laughter. Even Leisure Suit Larry never resorted to bestiality for a puzzle's solution.
My favorite part of the game was dunking the urchin Wiggins into a keg of ancient wine. I suppose it was more like commanding him to get in which he did. That's probably even more humiliating. But he did say he'd do anything for Mr. Holmes! He's lucky I was done trying to kiss things after being told a dozen times previously that I was too horny for the Victorian era.
SCORES
Game Title: I suppose it had to be called Sherlock so the Sherlock Holmes fans would purchase it but Sherlock doesn't do much. He says it's because the only way to thwart Moriarty is to not think like Sherlock Holmes but I expect he's still fucked up on opium. The Riddle of the Crown Jewels might be too accurate because the game is half riddles and half crown jewels. The other half of the game is trying to kiss everybody.
Puzzles: They were all pretty fair. The gist of how to solve most of them was usually evident and then it was just a matter of trial and error to figure out the correct solution (okay, so maybe I didn't immediately think "I need to rent a homing pigeon!" when I saw the ruby in Admiral Nelson's eye. But eventually it all comes together). Except for the puzzle where the solution was "read this super boring newspaper where the bit you need is about three-quarters of the way through which you'll either never get too because the rest is so boring or by the time you do get to it, you're not paying attention anymore." In a way, it was the most clever puzzle of them all! Two other puzzles relied on reading the example gameplay in the manual because they teach you how to summon the cab and how to haggle. Those are more fair because the example puzzle was short and interesting rather than long and tedious. One of the puzzles was knocking a bung out of a bunghole which allowed me to cackle like Beavis for five full minutes. I shot it with a pistol instead of using the mace because I was a reckless maverick who totally didn't try to take advantage of Wiggins in the Tower of London dungeon. Who's going to believe a street urchin over a wealthy and famous doctor?! I mean, as long as they don't read my other text adventure reviews where I try to fuck every NPC I encounter.
Gameplay: It plays exactly as you'd expect an Infocom game to play except with less descriptive areas and less descriptive objects and no Elvish sword. It has a time limit but the time limit barely matters (except for knowing when the high tide is in). Technically, Watson remains awake for forty-eight hours before solving the case. Except for the brief nap he gets after being blackjacked outside the bank when Holmes is kidnapped. While it seems like this game should be about solving a mystery, it's just a hunt for a bunch of gems. This game could easily have been renamed Batman: The Riddler Hid Some Crown Jewels.
Graphics: It's an Infocom game! Doesn't that speak for itself?! How old are you that you don't know Infocom games don't have graphics?! Oh, don't give me any of that later stuff where they tried to add graphics! If you were old enough to know Infocom games didn't have graphics, you'd be old enough to hold the opinion that those later games with graphics weren't really Infocom games! You don't get knowledge like that from Wikipedia!
Concept: I suppose for companies that want an instant fan base for their merchandise, it's a great concept to use a famous literary character. But since Bob Bates chose to write a game that was in actuality a treasure hunt instead of a mystery, couldn't he have used a character that was in the public domain at the time?! Wouldn't Infocom have saved a bunch of money if they'd just made Gulliver: The Riddle of the Houyhnhnms Hay Bales?
Fun Time: The amount of time I spent playing the game minus the amount of time I kept knocking the opal into the Thames was probably how much of the time I was having fun. Since there was an entire year between my playing the first half of the game and the second half, I can't even remember how much time I spent on it. After getting the clue for the high tide, I don't think I spent more than an hour working through the Bank of England, the Tower of London, and the endgame with Moriarty. But before that, I probably spent four or five hours? Probably an hour or two on Westminster Abbey, an hour at Madame Tussaud's, an hour exploring London, and an hour split between Big Ben and Trafalgar Square. That seems about right! And I wasn't really bored of the game until that damned clump of moss and it's infernal need to keep falling into the Thames, taking the opal with it.
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