Teen
sleuth Nancy Drew is leaping into her eighth interactive adventure,
courtesy of the talented team at HerInteractive. This time around
Nancy is trying to get to the bottom of some odd goings-on at an amusement
park at the Jersey shore.

I will start by saying
that all of the traditional virtues of the series are evident, as
usual:

• The graphics are crisp,
  clean, colorful and appealing.
• The atmosphere is spot-on
  vintage Nancy Drew. As I’ve said many times, this is no small
  accomplishment considering the expectations and baggage that come
  with such a well-worn franchise.
• The story is engaging
  and entertaining.
• The game includes educational
  elements.

I’ll
go further in saying that this is the tightest game so far in the
series, and it benefits from refinements made to an already solid
formula.

One very much appeciated
such refinement is that the menu screens have at last been streamlined!
I’ve been complaining about this since the series started, and
I’m happy to report that it takes significantly less clicking
to load and save games.

Also, this game completely
dispenses with the time element that most of the Nancy Drew games
have used. Some players may disagree with me, but I always found fiddling
around with that darned alarm clock irritating.

All of the action of the
game takes place in and around the amusement park. The map feature
makes getting around a snap. More than in any game in the series,
I felt like I was spending my time solving puzzles and problems and
moving the story forward, instead of just traipsing around.

The
voice acting in the series continues to get better. It’s solid
throughout the game.

The characters in the game
also have very solid and compelling backstories and personal agendas.
It’s some of the best writing and character development the
series has seen as well.

The puzzles, once again,
are very organic indeed. Since The Secret of the Scarlet Hand,
the sixth game in the series, I have found this to be an admirable
quality. Example: using an actual lathe to fashion a replacement part
for a carousel band organ just made a ton of sense.

Nancy’s computer
also provides a lot of help. There’s a fantastic “Things
to Do” feature that always keeps you on track of what you have
left to accomplish. She also receives useful clues through email.
I wish EVERY adventure game had this feature!

The
tightness of the game’s construction, plot and location mean
that the game is pretty short. This is not a complaint. Nancy Drew
books aren’t long, and it wouldn’t make sense for the
games to be epics, either. Modesty becomes Nancy Drew. Indeed, the
compactness of the game even adds a welcome sense of urgency and immediacy.
You really feel like you’re Nancy, rolling up your sleeves and
getting to the bottom of things without any nonsense.

At
this point in the series, the games are so refined that I have to
really reach for things to criticize, but I do have just a couple
of quibbles:

• In previous games,
  calling Nancy’s friends for help was optional. In this game,
  there’s an important puzzle that can only be solved by enlisting
  your girlfriends’ help. Since I had rarely used this feature
  in earlier games, it didn’t occur to me to use it in this
  one. Perhaps younger players more used to chatting with Bess and
  George won’t have this problem.
• I look forward to the
  day when the characters aren’t bolted to the floor. The only
  person that ever seems to get to move is the villain.
• Despite my admiration
  for the organic puzzles, I would like to see more “puzzle”
  puzzles as well. Things like tricky Chinese boxes, ludicrously complicated
  locks, and fiendishly constructed traps are totally appropriate
  in the context of a Nancy Drew story. They also tend to work exceedingly
  well in the graphic format used in these games. I’d love to
  see more of them.

As usual, I’m looking
forward to the next troublesome situation Nancy gets herself into.
I’m also looking forward to whatever bigger and better projects
HerInteractive has planned next.

Final Grade: A

System Requirements:

• Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
• PC CD-ROM
• 200Mhz Pentium
• 16MB RAM
• 160 MB hard drive space
• 16-bit color graphics
  video card
• 16-bit Window-compatible
  stereo sound card
• 8X CD ROM
• Mouse
• Speakers

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.