Out of all Frogwares' Sherlock games, this is probably the grimmest, mostly because, as you'd guess from the title, the great detective chases the sinister serial killer only known as Jack the Ripper, who roams the streets of Whitechapel. The story itself leans heavily upon genuine Jack the Ripper lore and the murder scenes are presented in a factual manner. Only the most gruesome murder pinned on Jack the Ripper is left unseen, the game wisely shows only Holmes' reaction to the mutilation of his last victim, Mary Kelly, whom the killer shredded to pieces.
After the lighter match against Arsene Lupin, Holmes is again looking for a case to crack. Watson directs his attention towards gruesome murders that have taken place recently. Two women have been murdered by a vicious killer and Holmes decides to take the case in an unofficial capacity. He has no intention of trying to steal the case from inspector Abberline.
At this point in the case, there are many suspects around, a lot of blame and suspicions. Some thought it was the foreigners, some blamed the Jewish community of London. But, at the time, the murderer wasn't yet known as Jack the Ripper, this would come later when he wrote to the press using this moniker. The murders were seen as yet another display of the dangers late 19th century prostitutes were subjected to in the harsh existence of gradually industrializing London. This is the kind of darkness Holmes is better equipped in navigating than his chivalrous friend Watson, who is more often horrified by the harsh conditions of Whitechapel.
In this tale, Jack the Ripper is not some exotic character, like the royal doctor William Gull aiming to cover the sins of the crown prince. The murderer is one of the downtrodden citizens of Whitechapel, who is flooding his anger towards the part of society he believes has wronged him. As Holmes is who he is, he obviously solves the case, but just like in reality, the information of the identity of the murderer is never forwarded to the larger public. Holmes is afraid of what the knowledge of the identity of Jack would cause. Afraid of the backlash of the larger public towards a smaller sect of the population.
Sherlock Holmes VS Jack the Ripper is something of a transitional game in the Frogwares' Holmes series. While it still has its fair share of traditional puzzles, it also has a good emphasis on gameplay geared towards genuine crime investigation. At the murder scenes, Holmes and Watson stage the murders, so that they would have a better understanding of how the murders happened. Holmes builds timetables, which place the people, witnesses, victims and the police, in their right places. He analyzes the killer, tries to look into his psyche. In a word, this is a game, where you actually have to figure out motives and suspects for the murders.
As such, the puzzles are a bit of a mixed bag. I quite like the crime scene construction and the deduction of the motives and piecing together the clues on the timelines. This is really where the game design shines. But, there are quite a few more traditional puzzles around, where you have to solve puzzles, like open locks, by solving tile puzzles which seem rather poor choices for lock mechanisms. It is an odd mixture, making the game feel like the developers didn't quite know in what direction they wanted to take it. So, they ended up throwing in all kinds of stuff, just to be on the safe side.
Depending on your preferences, SHvsJtR can be played either as a 1st person game or as a 3rd person point and click game. The 3rd person mode feels here more playable than in the previous remastered editions made of the Holmes games. The locations are still big, but the camera angles feel better thought out and there might have been even more thought placed on the design so, that it works reasonably well on both camera modes.
I do have to note, that the version I played, bought from Steam, does seem to suffer from some technical issues. One is annoying, the other is a bit more severe. The more annoying one makes some of the dialogue repeat a couple of times. The more severe one can prevent you from saving the game. This particular bug can make you lose some progress, so it is advisable to save the game often. That way you'll at least notice when the bug strikes. These happen under Windows 10 at least.
After Jack the Ripper, Frogwares started to move their Holmes series even more towards a proper criminal investigation. Puzzles were pushed to the background to give the more proper deductive crime-solving room to shine, which is a good thing, considering Holmes is a detective after all.
Frogwares Holmes series show an interesting evolutionary curve. They started the series with a Myst-style puzzle game, continued with a traditional point and click the title, which was followed by the 1st person iteration, which went from mainly puzzle themed mystery-solving to what Jack the Ripper offers. While this isn't quite the slam dunk, it does show they were already thinking of focusing the future games even more on the crime-solving itself.
If you want to dip your finger on the mystery of one of the most notorious serial killers in the world, you can get the game from the usual sources. It's a decent game, but do note you have to stomach a decent amount of violence.
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