Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave
Score: 93% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Her Interactive Developer: Her Interactive Media: CD/2 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure/ Family
Graphics & Sound: Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave is game number 15 in Her Interactive’s Nancy Drew franchise. For reliably released sequels, Her Interactive just can’t be beat; I say this because hard core adventure gamers must often wait years for the sequel to their favorite adventure game. Nancy Drew fans never have to wait long for the next installment. In fact, the next episode, The White Wolf of Icicle Creek is already being announced and will no doubt be released timely early next year. And not only are Nancy Drew games released timely, they are released without glitches and without graphic or audio degradation, a testament to Her Interactive’s well-oiled production pipeline. The Creature of Kapu Cave is set on an island in Hawaii, and the graphic rendering of the landscape and scenery is quite beautiful – more so, I would say, than in the most recent Drew release, Danger by Design. Creature of Kapu Cave is a point and click adventure, so there is no 360-degree in game camera. Usually, I feel somewhat limited by point and click, but in Creature of Kapu Cave, the areas and the player’s mobility in them are satisfying enough that I enjoyed poking around; I felt the illusion of great mobility in Creature of Kapu Cave. Moreover, Creature is set in a landscape that has not been mercilessly overused by adventure game developers - one more Egypt game and I think I'll go mad. Her Interactive is consistently creative in game world design. There are gameplay sequences both at the beach and underwater, and these are, on the whole, finely rendered. In some island scenes there is audio of wind blowing, but the graphics don’t quite match with that aural experience as the trees and other loose objects don’t move; but on the beach, the water’s motion and the usual beach sounds are perfectly delivered. The map for travel between different locations is a great improvement over the Paris Metro map in Danger by Design; Nancy has a yellow Jeep that she clicks on to bring up the location map. The graphics in this transition map are simple but well done. The audio – a plane engine taking off and landing – doesn’t quite match the travel sounds a Jeep would make, but it still works as an aural experience. Clatter and Din and Bill Corkery Productions did the sound work in Creature of Kapu Cave and as always, it is reliable and effective. Kevin Manthei Music provided scoring for Creature of Kapu Cave and much to their credit, they did not rely on clichéd, banal Hawaiian music to achieve atmosphere. The score is appropriate, original, and successful. And Lani Minella turns in yet another great performance as Nancy Drew.
Gameplay: In this episode, Nancy must travel to Hawaii to assist Dr. Quigley Kim in field work in entomology. Like Danger by Design, Nancy must work for a quirky and eccentric employer – but Quigley is somehow a much more enjoyable and entertaining character than Minette in Danger. Quigley is not bipolar and weird; she’s just an eccentric and funny academic. She has a sort-of valley girl accent which is amusing and somehow appropriate. Nancy’s goals will involve entomological research as well as snooping around the Hilihili Research Facility and discovering who trashed Quigley’s campsite. While Nancy works for Dr. Quigley, Frank and Joe Hardy are also on the Big Island in Hawaii – Nancy runs into them at the beach. They have been hired by Richard Aikens to investigate the record of Mike and Pua Mapu. Frank and Joe must discover whether Mike and Pua have any blemishes in their past that would hinder Aikens’s marketing campaign. Gameplay will switch between Frank, Joe, and Nancy. They will work together to solve their allegedly separate mysteries. There are a few mini-games, some of which are a little uninspiring, but the fishing game is really fun and quite a lot like fishing. The player baits the hook, casts, and watches a bobber – watching the bobber is quite possibly the most spiritual experience about fishing, and Creature makes the most of it. There are a few places where the player may “die” or fail, but the Drew games provide what’s called a “second chance” so that you may pick up from precisely where the mistake was made, thus avoiding unnecessary frustration.
Difficulty: Creature of Kapu Cave is, on the whole, not difficult. In every case, all information necessary to solve a puzzle is readily available and very easy to find. The puzzles are fun, and usually meaningful – that is, they blend with the storyline and don’t just sit there as puzzles for the sake of puzzles. However, the scientific research that Nancy must conduct is admittedly pretty involved. All the information to solve the puzzle is immediately available, but the player must do a lot of hunting around in the game and then page-flipping through Quigley’s notes to compile the data. It is time-consuming (which if you’re a true adventure gamer or a committed Nancy Drew fan shouldn’t be a problem) and if you’ve not identified the critters and the plants precisely right, you’ll be at it for a while. But this puzzle is truly meaningful, something that a research assistant would no doubt do. Persistence, logical thinking, and careful attention is all that is needed.
Game Mechanics: The mechanics of Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave are in my view completely faultless. The in-game menu works flawlessly, and there is not a single glitch or coding error anywhere that I could find. The cursors are clearly identifiable and the inventory work is simple but consequential. The mini-games work perfectly. Her Interactive has honed their production process to a fine art, and they do not cut corners on testing. The only reason the score here for Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave is not on the high end of the 90's is because, I suspect, the age range for which this game is recommended. Her Interactive recommends this game “For Mystery Fans 10 to Adult.” I am in the latter category, proven by the fact that I am old enough to have watched the Hardy Boys television series with Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy (remember the feathered hair?) when it first came out. This game is fun for me, and so Her Interactive’s recommendation is appropriate after a fashion. But it is not great fun or a game that I will remember for years. I imagine that for younger players, this game is far more entertaining and a source of discovery than for the older player. If parents want to play a video game with their children, I feel confident they won’t find this game or any of the Drew games at all as dreary as Paris Hilton’s confessions, Mary-Kate and Ashley’s anorexia, or earphones over which they can hear the muddled screech of some one-hit band. Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave is a solid game produced by a solid developer and recommended heartily for players under the age of 18 (and parents interested in spending time with their daughters).
-Doc Holliday, GameVortex Communications AKA Valerie Holliday
Minimum System Requirements: 1GHz or greater Pentium or equivalent class CPU; 128 MB of RAM; 1 GB or more hard disk space; 32 MB DirectX compatible video card; 16 bit DirectX compatible sound card; 24X CD-ROM drive   Test System: 1.8 GHz AMD CPU; 1 GB RAM; NVidia GeForce 7800 256 MB video card; Creative Audigy 2 sound card; 52X CD-ROM drive
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