One of the best things about Xbox Gold is that they have a handful of games that are free to download every month. Last month, I downloaded Sherlock Holmes: Crime and punishments.

In the game, you play Sherlock and solve cases. There are 6 cases to be solved all together.

To solve the cases, you visit crime scenes, interrogate characters and take profile notes of the suspects in order to piece together the guilty character.

I love games like this and love the feeling of figuring something out by clues. The game is beautifully designed and the graphics are lovely.

Though there are some negatives in the game. The controls feel clunky at times and the load times between location are painful.

Sometimes it can be a bit unclear how to use the menu, too. When you gather evidence, when you interrogate people and find clues, it call gets logged for you to access and go through, prompting you what you should be doing next, although this didn’t feel very natural and it wasn’t until I got to the end of the first case I realise there were prompts within this menu to help me solve the case.

At the end of the case, you can reveal if you were right or not. Or you can go on and reveal if you were right at the end of the whole game. It also compares your choice with other players.

Overall, the game is okay. Though if someone was to ask me for a crime investigation game, I’d recommend LA Noire for much better game play. I know a lot of people didn’t enjoy that game when it came out a few years ago, I loved it!

What are your favourite crime investigation games?