Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Her Interactive Developer: Her Interactive Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure/ Family
Graphics & Sound: Considering the game's budget and price tag, Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek doesn't look bad at all. Both characters and locations are fairly good and pretty well detailed. While the graphics don't rival some of the bigger, next-gen titles that have been coming out, no one really expects that from an adventure game like this. Audio is average, but not bad. All of the characters in the game are fully voiced and most are okay, but a few lines sound forced or phoned in (Nancy's particularly, but that might have just been because she had the most lines, and thus a greater chance of hearing the difference).
Gameplay: Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek follows Nancy's latest job. She is hired to investigate a series of explosions at a mountain top resort. When she arrives at the secluded winter wonderland, she takes on the role of both maid and cook in order to get close to the few guests that are currently staying at the lodge. The Icicle Creek resort also seems to be tormented by a white wolf who may be connected to the explosions. As the maid, Nancy will have to perform several unusual tasks. One of these jobs includes brushing the snow off of the frozen lake, but you need to be careful what areas you clear off. You only want the skaters to travel along the thicker parts of the ice, so pay attention to how dark and blue the ice is. There are several other jobs like this that might seem a bit out of the ordinary or unrelated to the story, but in the end it all fits.
Difficulty: Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek feels like a short game, but it is pretty packed with a wide variety of puzzles to work through. I guess, since I was able to plow through most of them without much issue, it made the game seem shorter than it was. Experienced adventure gamers familiar with a lengthy inventory and thinking about things a certain way will probably not have as much difficulty as a more casual gamer. As for younger gamers whom this game could very well be geared towards, it seems like it would offer just the right amount of challenge to keep them interested. Only a few of the problems might cause enough frustration to have to put the game away for a while.
Game Mechanics: Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek is your average point-and-click adventure. The interface doesn't really offer anything extraordinary, with the possible exception of having Save, Load and Exit options available right on the HUD next to the Inventory button. Hovering over hot-spots changes your icon so that you know how you can interact with the environment, while using an object in the location involves simply opening your bag, selecting the item and applying it to the hot-spot. Like I said, not much different than most adventure titles. This standard interface makes the game easy to pick up and play without any kind of learning curve. If you enjoyed any of the previous Nancy Drew games, you will probably want to grab this title as well. More hardcore adventure gamers might steer clear of this game, just because its more classical story might be a turn-off.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: 1 GHz or greater Pentium 3 or equivalent class CPU, 128 MB RAM, 1 GB or more hard drive space, 32 MB DirectX 9.0 compatible video card, 16 bit DirectX compatible sound card, 24x CD-ROM drive   Test System: Alienware Aurora m9700 Laptop, Windows XP Professional, AMD Turion 64 Mobile 2.41 GHz, 2 GB Ram, Duel NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB Video Cards, DirectX 9.0c
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