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Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy from Her Interactive takes Nancy to Ireland. She’s there intending to be in a wedding when the groom goes missing. It isn’t cold feet, it’s murder. This is as always a point-and-click adventure. It begins with a short tutorial and some background information for those who are new to the Nancy Drew games.
The mystery game - play consists of fact-finding, and problem-solving. There are sliding tile, shifting weight, spinning gear solutions. There are many puzzles which are entertaining and move the story along. Compared to a recent Sherlock Holmes game that I reviewed this one has better writing and the other details are carefully maintained. Here the characters are fully animated and the voice work matches the animation.
Casual games that developers expect women to play need to have a high degree of detail. Women notice everything.
The plot this time is humorous because the characters in the game all have a different idea about what happened to the missing groom. Nancy interviews each character and some will require the obligatory gofer mission before they will give up any clues. In one instance you need to ply one of them with drinks or join an Irish jam session. Both of those ideas may offend some parents, because alcohol use usually pumps up the ESRB rating above “E” which this one has. Normally there would be a content descriptor for “alcohol use”, but there isn’t one listed for some reason. Tokens are obtained by playing bartender at the pub, which may not be suitable for all ages. This would not be the first or last time that I disagreed with the ESRB on a rating.
The game can be played on two difficulty levels which are either the junior and senior detective. In the junior setting, you’re given a task list as a guide. It is employed as a cool looking token accepting Fortune Teller machine found in the castle. The environments are presented at night where you’ll see fairy rings, bogs and menhirs and dolmens in spooky country settings.
The user interface can be a little sticky. No more so than in any adventure game where you keep trying to Look at something or Pick Up an item and you have to do it over and over again until you click in just the right spot. Sometimes adjusting your mouse sensitivity will avoid that problem, especially if you have it set up for an MMO or FPS, an adventure game calls for a slowed down click. If you enjoy point and click adventures, the Nancy Drew games have consistently been very good. They work well, the details are all there. Other than the theme choice and the stereotyping of Irish people as pub dwellers that children must make cocktails for, the game has few flaws. I give Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy six tokens out of ten.
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