It's Elementary: A History of Detective Video Games

With Heavy Rain dropping this week, we got on the trail of gaming's most notable detective titles.

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New and veteran gamers alike—at least the ones with PS3s—have been waiting for tomorrow with bated breath: Heavy Rain finally drops...and makes a splash...like rain...that's heavy! Like our current cover man Drake, Heavy Rain has accumulated an immense amount of pre-release hype, but if you've played the demo (or own a brain that functions), you'll know that there's good reason for it. Developers Quantic Dream are the same team that brought us Indigo Prophecy, and HR is about to pair that innovation with the layer of polish that they couldn't quite attain the first time around. In other words: game-changer...

The thing is, while Heavy Rain is on some next-level stuff, the one thing that gives us the tiniest bit of pause is the game's detective bent. Call us crazy, but when it comes to detective games, we've seen good, bad, and some truly horrendous (we're looking at you Psychic Detective). So before you go all Sherlock Holmes on us, make sure you know what you're getting into: put away your magnifying glass and weird double-billed houndstooth cap and 7% cocaine solution and get a clue about the history of detective games.

sherlockholmes

TITLE: Sherlock Homles: Consulting Detective: Volume 2 (1994)
CONSOLE(S): SEGA CD
COMPLEX SAYS: Yep, the O.G. of detective work had his own game. Too bad that shit was the yawn of the Baskervilles. With SEGA x Sherlock, you'd think they could do a lot better than point, click, read. At least the game has a built-in alarm clock, in case you fall asleep reading the billion-odd pages of clues.


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