Here at The Elite Institute, we are keen on highlighting a variety of great games to our audience. Whether it be indies, AAA titles, or anything in between, we want to show off as much as possible in order to help guide your purchasing decisions.

That’s why we’re not entirely restricting ourselves to the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to Nintendo Labo VR Kit (check out our review), we’ve fallen in love with virtual reality and as a result have invested in a PlayStation 4 along with PSVR. There are some truly great experiences on the system, and we’d love to share our thoughts with you.

ELEMENTARY
When I heard that PSVR1 was getting a whole new game in 2024, I was all kinds of excited. I may have been late to the party, and really should be covering content for the second VR headset, but I’m still having a blast sharing my thoughts on some of these older titles for people who may be looking at grabbing a more affordable virtual experience. As such, it’s great to know that there are some indie devs still supporting the platform and releasing things on both the od and new headsets.

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The Murder of Sherlock Holmes places you in the iconic sitting room of 221B Baker Street as you find a letter implying that the great detective has been murdered. However, things are not quite what they seem as this virtual room exists in a dreamlike space where gravity isn’t what it seems: some objects float around, and there’s even a table stuck on the ceiling. What’s even stranger is that Holme’s note reveals that the culprit is waiting for you in the apartment hallway, but you need to find a way out to get to him.

It’s a bizarre futuristic reality that ties the fictional location with the dreamlike Oniria World that the developers have created (presumably to tie all future games together), and it works well for the most part. The voxel artstyle is simple but really nice to look at. As I mentioned in the review for Just in Time Incorporated, I’m not a huge fan of that aesthetic usually but it works incredibly well in VR – and this game is no exception. Whether it’s the bear rug in front of a roaring fireplace, or chunky books lined up on the shelf, it all looks really great.

As for the game itself, it plays out as an escape room where you need to obtain the door handle and the key parts needed to open the door. As such, there are only really a small handful of puzzles needed to beat the game ranging from mixing chemicals to tuning a violin, and they’re all pretty enjoyable to do. To make things more difficult, the game is chock full of red herrings designed to throw you off the scent. The violin guide, for example, contains a range of tuning peg patterns that seem connected to some greater puzzle, but is in fact completely meaningless – as are the multitude of objects and interactions in the room that do little more than unlock trophies.

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All of these extra things make it seem like the room has far more things to uncover than there actually is. Finding all the dud keys can be fun, but given that there’s nothing to open with them – even just for an easter egg – seems like a bit of a missed opportunity. There’s a really interesting room here to play around with, but I just wish there was a little bit more optional substance to do to help justify the price tag as even when exploring everything, it can be easily completed with half an hour.

But, what is there is enjoyable and playing around in the dream world was rather fascinating, especially as a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Some may bemoan the inclusion of teleportation movement, but I honestly didn’t find it that much of an issue given the limited movement space anyway.

What I did find to be problematic, however, was the control setup. The left Move Controller allows you to turn and crouch using the buttons, whereas the right one is in control of teleportation. The problem is that grabbing an object with one hand bizarrely deactivates the other functions of that hand, meaning that you can teleport but not turn when holding an object in the left hand, or you can turn but not move anywhere when it’s in your right. In the end, I just chucked stuff across the room to where I wanted it and made my own way over. Hopefully this is something that can be addressed in a future patch, as it becomes a pretty frequent issue.

VERDICT
The Murder of Sherlock Holmes is a solid but short escape room experience with some fantastic voxel art. Movement issues can be rather troublesome at times, but fans of the great detective may want to check this one out when it’s on a deep sale.