Datasoft
Disk
£14.95
1/4 players
Joystick/Keyboard
221B Baker St. is, of course, the legendary home of Sherlock Holmes
so, not surprisingly, you play the part of Sherlock (or one of his
colleagues) in attempting to solve numerous intriguing cases, mostly
involving murder most foul!
It is an accurate copy of the board game of the
same name which has been around for about 10 years and which bears
many similarities to Cluedo: you move your character around the
board on the throw of a dice, enter numerous buildings to obtain
clues and, when you think you know the Who, How, and Why of the
case, you check to see if you have won. Unlike Cluedo, each time you
play 221B Baker St. you use a different scenario. There are 30 cases
provided with the game, and supplemental libraries are planned. Each
case consists of a couple of hundred words describing the
circumstances of a crime, the various suspects involved in it, and
what you have to discover about it in order to win. There are two
types of clues: General Statement Clues (e.g. Alice Gloth was seen
outside the Pub the night of the murder) which may or may not be red
herrings and Puzzle Clues (e.g. KILLER CLUE (Four Parts) – 1:
Capone's first name), very much like crossword clues and always
sufficient to completely solve the crime if you can find them all.
Extras include the ability to lock locations,
secret tunnels (not present in the board game), and the Carriage
Depot which allows speedy transport around the town.
The board is angled on the screen, only showing a
small part of the 20 by 19 board (making a map is recommended.), the
buildings are all shown in nice 3-D graphics. The characters (up to
four of them) shuffle around the board in response to the joystick
and entering a location causes a picture to be displayed, with
various sound effects such as owls hooting and fog-horns sounding,
and of course a clue is shown (you should make some checklists of
the locations for recording your clues). Once the novelty of the
graphics and the animation has worn off however, it all becomes
rather laborious. The characters move slowly, the board is repainted
rather than scrolled, and the pictures take ages to load from disk.
As a one player game it has little to recommend it (the board game
is unplayable by a single person), and once you have multiple
players you have the problem of preventing the others seeing your
clues on the screen. There are two solutions. One is to just make
everyone else turn away which is extremely boring for those who have
to turn away (of course in the board game you just get on with your
turn while the previous player is looking in the clue book) and the
second solution is provided by an option to have Coded Clues – this
involves each player being allocated a code (there are 20 provided)
and the clues being displayed with certain key words in code. This
adds the extra dimension of allowing the players to try and break
the codes and read each other's clues but I personally found that it
slowed the game down even more, and that, since everyone has a full
set of codes, it was relatively easy to work out which one each
person was currently using.
The board game costs about £10 and has 40 rather
than 30 cases. As such it is about half the price per case and it is
much more playable given the plodding speed of the computer version.
If you already have the board game note that 11 of the 30 are
duplicates of the board game cases. It's a great game and I
recommend you rush out and buy it now – but preferably the board
version!
John Sweeney
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