To
paraphrase, never judge a DS game by its cover. For starters, the
Nancy Drew shown on the cover of The Model Mysteries
is a pretty, approximately sixteen year-old brunette while the Nancy
Drew portrayed in the game is a pretty, approximately sixteen year-old
brunette…wearing thick, black glasses. Why the discrepancy?
Could it be that THQ marketing feared that putting a four-eyed female
dweeb on the cover would negatively impact game sales? Or maybe Nancy
had Lasik surgery in time for her cover shoot.

If you’re a huge
fan of the wildly successful series of Nancy Drew games from Her
Interactive (21 games and still going strong), then THQ’s
Nancy Drew: The Model Mysteries is not for you.
The game itself is based on a three book Nancy Drew trilogy –
Model Crime, Model Menace and Model
Suspect and follows the teen sleuth as she serves as a bridesmaid
in a wedding between her friend Sydney, a famous model, and Syd’s
fiancée Vic, a reality TV star. After Vic is almost poisoned,
Nancy begins to question whether someone has a grudge against the
engaged couple, or if the reality show producers are just trying to
increase their ratings.

But
whereas the Her Interactive franchise features a mix of intricate,
inventory-based puzzles and location related activities – in
Ransom
of the Seven Ships, for example, the player can scuba
dive for lost treasure or sail around the island and collect bottles
with messages in them, but these activities are obligatory and not
necessary to solve the mystery – The Model Mysteries
is nothing more than a series of casual games strung together by suspect
interrogations intended to present the illusion that the player is
actually solving the mystery, when nothing could be further from the
truth.

Each interrogation is limited
to three predetermined questions – total – that can either
all be directed towards one person or spread between two or three
suspects. The goal is to ask the correct question of the correct suspect.
Then, at the end of each chapter, you must accuse one of the suspects
of the crime du jour. If your choice is correct, you then move on
to the next chapter. But if you choose incorrectly, you must then
start over and replay that entire chapter. That’s right, the
entire chapter.

Each
chapter – there are three total – consists of a series
of casual/mini-games with a tenuous link to the story that are incorrectly
referred to by the publisher as adventure style: scrambled words puzzles,
timed search and find puzzles, spot the difference, a variation of
Simon and even a swimming mini-game. None of which are, at least by
my definition, adventure style puzzles.

While Nancy Drew:
The Model Mysteries might be fine for younger gamers, it
is a shame more effort wasn’t made to engage the player’s
intellect instead of dumping yet another generic and charmless casual
game onto the shelves and at that, one that must leave those unfamiliar
with Nancy Drew’s legacy without a clue as to how the heck she
has prospered for eighty years.