Serrated Scalpel takes you back to the "old" days of adventure games.
The first games that I ever played were King's Quest 5 and 6, both Laura Bow games, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Starting up Serrated Scalpel took me back in time to those days when I was young and carefree. Considering that this game has only 256 colors to make use of, the graphics are done very well. Players familiar with the "verb" action system of Look, Talk, Move, Use, etc., will also feel right at home when playing this game.
The things that stuck out most for me while playing the game were its story and non-linear fashion. You can not die or purposefully get stuck and any location that becomes available you can revisit as often as needed. More and more locations become available as you progress, which keeps things interesting. Conversations are recorded in Watson's journal so if you miss a dialogue line, you can always go back and read what was missed. And while you do need to do pretty much everything at some point, the order in which you do it does not always need to be followed to a T. I was off solving one of the subplots before I had even solved the main murder!
One thing I greatly enjoyed was the exploration aspect of the game. Almost everything can be clicked on for a description. Examining a dead body reminded me of my journeys through "Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Ra" in that you don't just Look at the body, you Look at the head, hands, wounds, etc. Great stuff! The only thing I missed was having hotkeys to relate to all the available verbs like in Lucas Arts games, or the ability to right-click through them like in Sierra games. The more logical verb would be the default one selected (Look for most objects, Talk for people), but to use anything else requires actually clicking it on the bottom of the screen. Not too taxing, but you might not think to use a specific verb that's needed to move forward.
Overall, I enjoyed my time through Serrated Scalpel and was really glad I came upon it. Any gamer who is familiar with the Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games of the early-mid 1990's should give this one a playthrough. Playing Serrated Scalpel is not required to play the sequel, Rose Tattoo, but if you've played one of these two games, I encourage you to play through the other one.