Nancy Drew - Stay Tuned for Danger
I was really looking forward to playing this game. For seventy years the Nancy Drew
books entranced girls with spine tingling detective mysteries solved by a brave and clever
heroine. Now, with an interactive game story, where girls can be Nancy Drew
and do the sleuthing, the adventure should be even more intense. Unfortunately this is not
so.
Navigation is the main problem. Detective stories are about investigation and exploring.
Because the game is not real 3D, players are constantly bumping up against the end of
screen and must use the U turn cursor to back out. Some areas cannot be reached unless
you maneuver just right. Time plays a part in solving the mystery. It took me a while to
understand why the open entrance changed into a steel door - it was after 6:00. You
should be checking Nancy's pocket watch for the time. Some things happen only in the
daytime, others at night and you have to kill time until the time is right. After awhile it
just becomes tiresome.
The single sheet user manual is mostly concerned with installing and uninstalling the
game. The description of the cursor function states simply that it “will change colors
when you move it around the Game Screen”. It is only in the reviewers guide that you find
out that blue means that you have reached the end of the screen and must change direction,
and red indicates:
The mouse action is sluggish and you can end up clicking and waiting and then clicking
again. On the Main Menu screen it helps to roll your cursor over the choices, wait until
the text becomes highlighted and then click. The on-screen Help consists of suggesting
that you call one of three friends for advice. Two were out, and one chatted and said he
missed me (Nancy) but offered nothing useful towards solving the case.
Cases are solved by finding and putting together clues to finally come up with a solution.
In this case, many of the clues seem to be either irrelevant or trivial. I mean after all,
when you decode a sheet of music and it says “cage a bad egg”, it isn't exactly
telling you much. Of the three reviewers, no one has finished the game. One got blown
up, one got locked out, the other is still working on solving the mystery. Since you will
most likely make numerous attempts to solve the case, a clever option in the game is
“Second Chance” which steps you back to a previous node in the game so you don't have
to die or start over from the beginning. However, there is no way of aborting the opening
sequence or previously heard dialogue and so it becomes increasingly annoying.
Her Interactive has a history of making games which are too complicated. First there was
McKenzie and Co. and then Vampire Diaries. Both of these were
commendable forays into the girl market but their games preceded the availailable tech.
Their heart is in the right place - they always seem to be trying. Everyone liked the
smaller, book-like packaging. It is clever and indicates some awareness of ecological
concerns.
There are some hints for playing this game through to the end,
and for figuring out how to de-fuse the bomb in the
Answers section of this site.
Genevieve 5/00
Ages 10 and Up
a. a person you can talk to.
b. a useful inventory item,
c. an object that you can interact
with, or
d. an area that can be viewed close up.
It's the last function that causes
confusion - OK- so I‘m looking at bird house - is that all there is to it?
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