Case Solved: The London Files review for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X

Is it better to be a broken game or a boring one? That’s the question I find myself asking after playing Case Solved: The London Files because, improbably, it manages to be both.

At first, I thought it was simply broken. It’s a point-and-click adventure game where you interview suspects, they give you clues, and then you find the objects corresponding with what they were talking about. It all seemed straightforward enough…or it would have, if it weren’t for the fact that every time I clicked on an object the game would freeze up. Not wanting to give up on the game after a minute, I forced the game to close and booted it up again, only for it to freeze up again. Finally, after ten minutes (during which time I closed and restarted the game at least five times), by some miracle the game suddenly started recognizing button inputs after finding clues and I was off.

Unfortunately, this led to my second discovery about Case Solved: there’s really not much of a game here. And I don’t mean in the sense of, “point-and-click adventure games aren’t real games” or anything, I mean that there’s barely anything to do here. The suspects tell you exactly what clues are objects, and then the objects start flashing on the screen so you know what you need to pick up. Once you have all the clues, you’re taken to a deduction screen where the game holds your hand through every step of the deductive process. As long as you’re capable of reading and remembering things for two seconds, you’ll be able to solve the game’s three cases in about an hour.

Or, at least, you’ll be able to solve them if the game even works – which is about as far from a sure thing as you could hope for, since the problems that plagued me when I first started the game kept coming back again and again and again. While there may be some minor points in Case Solved’s favour (a nice jazzy score, visuals that are easy on the eyes), they’re absolutely not worth the trouble the game will cause you trying to get it to work. Between being broken and just plain bad, I guarantee you that you have better things to do than playing this junk.

SpecNext provided us with a Case Solved: The London Files PC code for review purposes.