The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Rose Tattoo (1996)

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Rose Tattoo (1996), story and design by R.J. Berg, based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, developed by Mythos Software, published by Electronic Arts

Before the decline of the adventure genre in the latter half of the '90s, Electronic Arts tried its sweaty palms with the genre by releasing another entry to the Lost Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series. While Case of the Rose Tattoo is a direct sequel to Case of the Serrated Scalpel, a lot had changed during the years between the two games. Technically, at least.

The story of Rose Tattoo begins with an explosion. The brother of Sherlock, Mycroft ends up as a victim during his lunch break at his beloved Diogenes Club. the explosion is witnessed by Sherlock and Watson, who were to meet Mycroft there. The police suspect a faulty gas line and Sherlock succumbs in a funk because of the worry of his brother. To snap him out of it, it is up to Watson to dig up evidence of foul play, so you get to play as him for a while.

Watson has to waddle his way through the hospital to see Mycroft and find the way to enter the scene of the explosion. Neither is an easy task, but in the end, he manages to find evidence pointing towards a bomb rather than an accident. This arouses Holmes out of his slumber and, as he puts it, the game is afoot.

After the duo manages to find out the reason for Mycroft's summons, the severity of the case reveals itself to Sherlock and Watson. It all is because Mycroft wanted them to look into the theft of a classified document from the ministry. As the official inquiry was closed, thanks to the document popping up by itself, the case has to be investigated in secret, so that in mind, Holmes and Watson have to do all they can to break the web of lies, blackmail, corrupt officials and national espionage.

A lot changed during the years between the two games. in 1992, Case of the Serrated Scalpel was a low-resolution pixel art adventure with less than stellar animation. In 1996, Case of the Rose Tattoo was presented with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds with character sprites captured from FMV. There are no FMV videos to narrate the story, but the game is fully voice acted with the exception of the description texts.

The character animation isn't quite as fluid as what Sierra managed to achieve with similar technology, but it is a step up from what the Case of the Serrated Scalped had. On the same note though, the game does have a lot of custom animations in it, some of which are annoyingly slow and unskippable. The biggest offender here is the animation cycle you have to watch when Holmes leaves or arrives at his apartment. Every time you have to watch him remove his jacket or robe and change it to an appropriate piece of clothing, depending on if he is coming or going.

The voice acting is overall pretty solid. Especially Jarion Monroe as Holmes and Matt Stenger as Watson do a commendable job. The rest of the cast is divided between a handful of actors, which is pretty evident, but all in all, despite some overly caricatured voice work, the end result is more than serviceable.

The UI has changed as well. This time around, you control Holmes with a smart cursor with additional command behind the right mouse button. Inventory items can be used only on specific occasions, so any inventory-based puzzle is easy by default as if the item can't be used, it can only be looked at. And when there is a way to use an item on a screen you are in, the verb that is shown with the item is directly linked to the task at hand, i.e. you'll get a verb to unlock with a key.

To proceed in the game, you have to talk and observe extensively. At times, you need to do more than look, as you have to examine as well or smell or taste things before you get new conversation options. At times it also helps to talk with Watson in length, as that opens up new ways to proceed, or just acts as hints. The most annoying part in scrutinising the scenes is the obligatory hotspot hunting, which in this case means actual pixel hunting at times. This can lead to situations where you just don't know how to proceed when you've missed a pixel-sized object in a scene.

While getting stuck is rare, it does happen it is usually pretty annoying, as the game itself is pretty logical all around. The puzzles stay away from moonlogic as everything can be figured out with regular mortal brains. It just is, that the UI makes it at times more difficult than it is. As far as I could tell, there shouldn't be any dead ends, so missing things won't end up in a game over, just some annoying back and forth between places to figure you what you've missed.

Case of the Rose Tattoo is a solid adventure game. It is a step up from the first game and is among the better games in the genre released by other company that doesn't have Sierra or Lucas on their name. It is a shame there weren't any more Holmes games under the EA banner, as there was quite a bit of promise with this second entry. it just was, that the other genres had started to out stage adventures and as Electronic Arts were already more interested in making as much money as they could, they dropped the decaying point 'n' click genre despite a 3rd game being teased at the end of Rose Tattoo.

Just like the Case of the Serrated Scalpel, the Case of the Rose Tattoo is not in circulation anymore. There are no digital versions of it sold anywhere, so you either need to scrounge the usual stores for a used copy or try to find it by other means. It is a shame it's not sold anywhere anymore, as it is a good game and well worth a place in the pantheon of Sherlock Holmes games.