I have to confess to some excitement at the arrival of the fourth instalment in Frogwares’s Sherlock Holmes franchise; the previous outing – Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened – remains one of my all-time favourite adventure titles. There, we last met Holmes trying to get to the bottom of a mystery straight from the pages of HP Lovecraft; this time around, he takes on another literary figure, although a considerably less well-known one.

The ‘Nemesis’ of the title is one Arsène Lupin, the ‘Gentleman Thief’, the literary creation of French writer Maurice LeBlanc. You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of him, as the 20-odd volumes of his adventures have never really enjoyed a great deal of popularity outside Francophone Europe, where they are still widely read. Interestingly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did know of Lupin, and in 1915 even objected to the character of Sherlock Holmes being used in a short story featuring the Gentlemen Thief; LeBlanc’s response was to change the character name to Herlock Sholmes (subtle, I know!). In Nemesis, Lupin plans to steal five objects of great value to the British, thereby embarrassing the nation. The game opens with Holmes reading a letter from Lupin challenging him to stop the thefts – and so begins a chess-like battle of wits.

As with the previous title, Nemesis is presented in a first person perspective with the player controlling Holmes, and occasionally Dr Watson for simpler tasks. Although I suspect the engine powering Nemesis is identical to the one used in The Awakened, the graphics do seem crisper and the colours more vibrant. There is no globe-trott­ing this time around, with all the action taking place in a wonderfully recreated 19th-century London, from Holmes’s Baker Street to the British Museum and the Tower, with many other famous landmarks along the way. Each area is large enough to maintain at least the illusion of free-roaming environments.

The puzzles you need to complete as you progress are numerous, but varied and, on the whole, well designed enough to feel integral to the plot. The curse of clues that are difficult to spot, even with Holmes’s trusty magnifying glass, makes an unwelcome reappearance and you often find yourself squinting at the screen for something you might have missed.

The quiz feature also returns; here, players cannot progress beyond major events without first answering a question on something that they have seen, heard or read previously. I actually like this feature, especially as it forces the gamer to play the game as intended, reading all the inform­ation available as they go along. As with the previous title, there is a great deal of data for budding detectives to read through, which never deviates from being well written and entertaining.

The dialogue between Holmes and Watson again steals the show with some great voice acting capturing both characters and their relationship perfectly, though sadly much of the acting for minor characters is less adept.
The interface remains unchanged, which is a definite plus: left-click to interact with people and objects, right-click to access your inventory; and movement between locations, once again, is only a click on your map away.

If, like me, you have a great avers­ion to the use of walkthroughs in adventure titles, then there is easily 60+ hours of gaming here; and, given that, as an adventure title, it’s priced at the lower end of the gaming market, this is incredible value for money.