Developers: Her Interactive
Publisher: Her Interactive
Platform: PC, Mac OS X
Nancy Drew – The Silent Spy – Review
Our review of the previous Nancy Drew (Ghost of Thornton Hall), received a nice score of 8.5. A great story, a nice atmosphere and wonderful puzzles. We only had a negative feeling about the voice acting and the clumsy movement controls. We hoped that The Silent Spy would fix these issues to make this a perfect game. The clumsy movement controls got completely fixed. The voice acting isn’t perfect yet, but it’s definitely more enjoyable!
Story
Nancy Drew, a young detective and the main character of the game, receives a call in the middle of the night. Nearly a decade ago, Agent Kate Drew, Nancy’s mother, left home to neutralize a biochemical weapon in Scotland. Kate’s assignment was a success, but died a bit later in a car accident. Nancy hears a weird voice on the phone which mentions her mother’s death was not an accident. Off you go to Scotland to search for the truth.
In Scotland you’ll meet Bridget Shaw, a native of Scotland. She acts very friendly and helpful, but maybe she just does that to hide something… You’ll also meet Ewan McLeod. Ewan is your main contact who assists you in your mission to uncover what happened with your mother. Also Moira Chisholm plays an important role in the story. Moira had a very close connection with your mother, so she also has some valuable information of course. But one thing is certain, how much can you trust these people…
Graphics
Compared to the previous Nancy Drew, the graphics improved a bit. The characters you meet during the story are looking better and they move more realistic. There are also more areas to explore and the environments are more varying. A hotel, a train station, a sporting gym, etc… The only disadvantage is that there still appear two ugly black bars on the sides of your screen when you’re playing full screen. It’s a bit weird that Nancy Drew still can’t fill a standard 1920 x 1080 resolution.
Sound
The Silent Spy contains more music than the previous Nancy Drew. Most of the environments received a sound track, and they fit perfectly for each specific area. Just like the previous game, there isn’t any music in the more creepy areas. You’ll only hear some low base sounds to increase the creepy feeling which works really well.
The biggest disadvantage of the previous Nancy Drew, the voice acting, is still far from perfect. The voice actors tried to add some emotions in their texts, but it ends up being overacted way too much. The big difference with the previous Nancy Drew is that it doesn’t feel so wrong this time. This game is less spooky and somehow it just feels less serious (even when the topic is pretty serious). This way the overacting even sounds a little sarcastic and it makes the game more humorous. Not sure if this was their intention, but it turns out really positively for them.
Gameplay
The Silent Spy is all about running around, finding clues to solve the mystery about your mother and solving genius and varying puzzles. Some of them are logical mini-games, while others require you to find clues before you’ll be able to complete them. Most of the puzzles are really original and take some time to solve. Especially when you play the game on the “Master”-level these puzzles turn out to be real brainteasers.
New in this Nancy Drew is the need to earn money. You’ll need money to pay train tickets to travel to new areas, to open lockers or to buy items which are required to solve some of the puzzles. You’ll find some money spread across the area, but that won’t be enough to make it through the story. To obtain some extra money, you’ll have to make and sell cookies. To do this, you’ll have to complete a small mini-game. In this mini-game you’ll be presented with an example cookie and you’ll have to serve the exact same cookie by adding the correct sweets and decorations. This is fun for a few times, but it gets boring pretty fast. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really add a value to the game.
The clumsy movement controls of the previous Nancy Drew are completely vanished. Just like the previous game, you need to click on the sides of your screen to move forward, left, right or turn around. Some areas also give you the option to look around by simply moving your mouse which works perfectly. They fixed it by positioning the areas way smarter, which makes it easier and faster to navigate through the areas with the existing controls. Turning around while you actually wanted to go to the left is history. Job well done Her Interactive!
Just like every Nancy Drew, this game also contains a lot of books, newspapers, notes, etc… which reveal more information about the story, the side-characters and other interesting information. Also the computers you’ll find during the story contain a lot of information. It will take some time to read all this information, but it’s definitely worth it.
Conclusion
Nancy Drew – The Silent Spy became even a better game than the previous one. A great story and awesome puzzles are still the key elements of this game. But on top of that, this Nancy Drew has slightly better graphics, they fixed the clumsy movement controls and the overacted voice acting doesn’t feel so out of place this time. It even given the game a humorous touch. The need to earn money for some actions wasn’t really needed though.
Nancy Drew - The Silent Spy - Review,
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