Hello all! Yesterday I played three Nancy Drew games by Her Interactive so I thought I’d review them all in a quick little review here! Something different from my usual NaNo rant updates. I though maybe everyone could use a break from them (especially me lol). I’ve never reviewed a game on here, even though I’ve played so many of them, so I guess I’ll just wing it? I dunno. I have a template for book reviews, but should I still use that? I dunno, guess we’ll see as we go along.
So, should I go in order that I played them in or their number order? Technically I think I played them in order of release date, so let’s just do that.
So, the first one I played (and stopped halfway through to go to bed), was The Final Scene, which was released in 2001. And, I don’t know what to say now, so I’m gonna just use my book review template because it means consistency and it’s easy, so like cool…. cool.
TITLE: The Final Scene
RELEASE YEAR: 2001
CORRESPONDING BOOK: Nancy Drew Files #38: The Final Scene
PLAYED: November 20 – November 21, 2018
SUMMARY:
Search a darkened movie theater to free a hostage from her captor’s dangerous plot!
Nancy’s high school friend, Maya Nguyen, who is now a reporter for Washington University’s paper, has invited Nancy to the Royal Palladium Theater in Saint Louis, Missouri to help her interview the star actor in a new movie, Brady Armstrong. His movie, Vanishing Destiny, will be the final premiere at the theater before its demolition. However, when Maya gets kidnapped just seconds after entering Brady’s dressing room, you, as Nancy Drew, are now plunged into a desperate race against the clock. With the theater being torn down in just three days, can you outwit the kidnapper and rescue your friend before the wrecking ball flies? Or will this be Maya’s final scene?
- Learn about Harry Houdini and his magic tricks
- Explore the inner workings of a historical theater
- Coordinate with the police and local groups to save a landmark theater
Okay, so fifth game in the series, so considering that I wasn’t really expecting that much. I mean to me, any game before The Haunted Carousel is either a hit or miss to me. Like, I don’t like The Scarlet Hand (I think I was just really annoyed with this one and I hate not having a checklist and it’s a lot of running around), Treasure in the Royal Tower is great in my opinion. I didn’t like Message in a Haunted Mansion (not only was in terrible game play, but I’m not sure I liked the plot and their wasn’t much to explore and mostly just chores), but the only thing I didn’t like from Stayed Tune for Danger was the graphics.
Anyway, back to The Final Scene. I had been waiting a while to play this game, so even though I wasn’t expecting much I was excited for it. Even though the game kinda shows it’s age, I thought it was pretty good. The beginning was pretty epic and the whole premises of the game was definitely attention grabbing. The characters were just the right amount of annoying and easy to make fun of, but also great to play with and I didn’t know till near the end who the culprit was.
I did have a problem with the fact that there wasn’t any checklist (I like checklists especially for when I get stuck) or that much to really do. It was a lot of running from person to person to talk to them over and over and hoping something you did would trigger the next event. Also, when we watched argulphump’s Everything Wrong with Nancy Drew: The Final Scene, we realized we somehow skipped a bunch of stuff, which was upsetting.
Also, Bess, George, and Ned are completely useless and you can’t call several of the numbers, which was just plain upsetting 😭
Okay, onto the next game!
TITLE: Secrets Can Kill, the remastered version!
RELEASE YEAR: 2010
CORRESPONDING BOOK: Nancy Drew Files #1: Secrets Can Kill
PLAYED: November 21, 2018
SUMMARY:
(I’m putting the summary for the original game along with the remastered game summary, because the remastered summary I found doesn’t really explain much).
Read between the lines to expose a killer!
A family visit throws you, as Nancy Drew, into the scene of a crime that happened just last night! You are taking a nice summer vacation in Florida with your Aunt Eloise and while you’re there, a student at Paseo Del Mar High School – where Eloise works as a librarian – is murdered in the school itself. Now Jake Rogers is dead, and a secret died with him – or did it? Although the police are looking into the matter, Eloise asks you to investigate as well, so you must go undercover to solve the case. Roll up your sleeves and dig into an engrossing mystery that is full of places to explore, puzzles to solve,, suspects to question, danger to evade and evidence to evaluate. A wily killer may be on the loose…so keep your wits about you.
- Dust for fingerprints and examine everything with your magnifying glass
- Explore a high school and snoop through confidential files on the suspects
- Discover the first Nancy Drew PC game that started the #1 selling adventure series
Nancy takes a semester off (this was probably her last year in high school) to visit her aunt Eloise in Paseo del Mar, Florida, and also decides to go 12 years into the future. Eloise is the librarian at the local high school, Paseo del Mar High School. A student, Jake Rogers, ends up dead at the bottom of some stairs in the school! This plunges Nancy into “another” case (the user’s guide for the Gameboy Advance version of Message in a Haunted Mansion says that Nancy helped her friend Emily Foxworth in a previous case, so maybe that was it). A police detective, Detective Beech, finds out about Nancy wanting to play detective for real, and asks her to go undercover as a student to investigate the murder, officially starting her career.
I’m really glad they remastered this one! I know with Stayed Tune for Danger it was really annoying and hard to navigate and the clickbait was annoying, so I assume the original version of Secrets can Kill would be just as bad, if not worse.
That being said, this game was so short! Even the remastered version, which supposedly was longer, was so short! I swear we finished it in less than an hour! Compared to most of the games, which take us about two or three hours, this is short.
I won’t say I hate this game, because I don’t think it’s one of my least favorite three and I did enjoy playing it, so that’s something, but the characters, ugh! I don’t think I can find a single good thing to say about them! And there wasn’t much build up or suspense for the end scene.
I heard they only put in one extra real puzzle and the one they added was gross. I don’t know how else to put it. It was long, unnecessarily hard to understand, and just annoying overall. Otherwise, there weren’t that many puzzles.
I think we somehow skipped stuff in this one too?
Ned is also useless in this one. Ned makes me hate Ned in this one.
TITLE: The Shattered Medallion
RELEASE YEAR: 2014
CORRESPONDING BOOK: Nancy Drew: Girl Detective Super Mystery #3: Real Fake
PLAYED: November 21, 2018
SUMMARY:
No one is immune to sudden death on this reality tv show!
You, as Nancy Drew and George end up winning a spot on a survival reality show in New Zealand called Pacific Run, in which players complete physical tasks to get five pieces of a medallion, and decide to bring Bess along. The eccentric Sonny Joon has hijacked production of the show, which is spiraling out of control as certain contestants are being favored and dangerous missions are being assigned. While competing in a challenge, George is seriously injured and your other friend Bess Marvin must step in to take her place. Now you, George, and Bess must investigate the incident that caused George’s injury as well as why Sonny took charge of the show and what he really plans to do with it. Are the mishaps the result of cheating competitors or something beyond this world? Win big to uncover the truth!
- Collect medallion pieces by beating other reality tv teams in a series of contests
- The producer areas are very off limits, but solving puzzles will get you inside the mines and even an undersea submersible
- Play mini games and learn about New Zealand plants, geography and native Maori words
I’M SO GLAD WE FINALLY GOT TO MEET SONNY JOON! HE WAS GREAT, DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU DIFFERENTLY!!!
This game had a great mix of easy and hard games; however, the plot was kinda pointless.
But I loved playing as a contestant on a reality TV show! Even if it was hard to win any of the medallions and people kept taking my medallions! Why would they do this to me? I just wanted to win the game 😭😭😭.
Some of the games in the puzzle room were pointless and other things were almost to difficult to understand what to day, even with the checklist. And when each task begins, you’re not given much instruction on what to do, so you just kinda wandering around hoping something will happen or you’ll be able to access a new point.
Oh, and make sure to keep talking to everyone! Even if you think you don’t need to talk to someone anymore, talk to them again! We didn’t and I feel like we missed several plot points that we learned about once the game was finished. It would’ve been nice to actually learn and play knowing these things for myself lol.
I don’t really have anything else to say about the games at the moment and this has been going on for a lot longer than I meant for it to, so I’m just gonna end it here.
Do you have any opinions on these three games? What are your personal favorites? Least favorites? Anything else you want to add?
"I'm basically an Avenger" 