Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower

I am a definite fan of Nancy Drew games. Although earlier games of the series were marked "For adventurous girls, 10 and up", Her Interactive apparently realized that the market is much wider and now marks the games "For mystery fans, 10 to Adult". The newer phrase hits the mark (pun intended): the series is great for anyone looking to play a classic Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple or Nancy Drew mystery. In the age when both movies and games have moved into the non-stop thriller and action plots, these harken to the earlier age when the crimes were committed with a twist of a key, a misleading word and a smile rather than with a shotgun and chainsaw. Sometimes it's really fun to get back into the middle of odd characters, each of which may have a motive for a crime. And to discover whodunit.

"Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower" is your typical Nancy Drew game. The setting is a mansion turned hotel in Wisconsin. Apparently the owner was your typical early century American, who pillaged European castles not only for artwork but for the whole towers wholesale. Well, maybe the positive side is that they escaped the World War II bombing.

The story is tied to the fortunes and misfortunes of Marie Antoinette. Anyone who has seen the recent movie (6/10), may guess at least some of the mysteries surrounding Marie's history. And even if you don't, by the end of the game Nancy will discover everything. The setting is nice, characters are sufficiently weird and phone conversations with Nancy's friends are as always hilarious. Don't get frozen outside! 7/10.

"Secret Files: Tunguska"

"Secret Files: Tunguska" is one of the newer adventure games. While "Dark Age of Camelot" MMOG is taking most of my gaming time, I still play single player games from time to time. "Secret Files: Tunguska" was a pretty nice distraction from Camelot's RvR slaughter. You play as Nina, daughter of Russian scientist Vladimir Kalenkov, who seems to know too much about what happened in 1908 in Siberian taiga. One evening you find your father's office ransacked and father himself missing. Now you have to uncover both the past of your father and of Tunguska event itself. Game interface is nice regular adventure game point-and-click interface with hints at hotspot locations. I can't really evaluate graphics and sound, since I usually jump between games released 5-10 years apart, so I usually ignore graphics unless they are particularly great or particularly atrocious. So what about the story and characters? Story is rather nice although I like detective stories in general. There are a number of twists and turns in it to keep you guessing about identities of the bad guys for a long time. And although some arcs are pretty obvious, others will surprise you until the end. I disliked some contrivances in the plot that would be obvious only to ex-Soviet block players. For example, in 1960's and 70's Kalenkov apparently has led international expeditions to Siberia to investigate Tunguska phenomenon with Peruvian and Irish scientists, one of whom is a Lord (!). Sorry, but this clashes strongly with the military interest and secrecy within Soviet Union.

Game characters range from rather mundane and bland to really nicely weird. How about a psychiatric hospital in Cuba with a guard who thinks he is Picasso and a receptionist who thinks she is the next Evita? And these are staff, not the patients. ;) On the other hand, Nina's character is never really fleshed out and made human. Some of the secondary heroes, such as Max are also very much stock figures, which definitely lowers my score of this game.

Some puzzles are quite inventive and novel, which is always welcome in the genre replete with FedEx and "turn that lever" cliches. A new way of listening to somebody else's phone call is both funny and ingenious.

So overall, it's a 7/10 game. Definitely worth playing but not up to the level where you would remember its characters and plot in couple of years.