Two of the game’s miniature adventures involve life-or-death situations with Nancy forced to act quickly or ascend to the great Sorority in the Sky, and these two are the game’s worst moments. Perhaps as a necessity, White Wolf includes several mini-games, all of them mandatory at one point or another, that range from clever and engaging, such as a Minesweeper-esque snow-shoveling chore or an old-fashioned game of Fox and Geese, to the downright mundane, such as the repetitive, mindless, unavoidable snowball fights. Moving is restricted to certain angles the cursor determines where you’re allowed to move, so while you’ll often feel restricted, it’s also reassuring knowing that every clue is within eyesight. The character models, set against pre-rendered, Myst-like background, gesture and speak in sync with their lines, and the lodge and its surroundings are detailed and interesting. Otherwise, the presentation is unobtrusive. Why does the most abundant voice have the worst actor behind it? Let’s get Encyclopedia Brown on that case. Luckily, the voice acting is genuine and believable, and even the Fredonian character’s accent doesn’t detract from the experience-that is, until Nancy starts speaking. Talking is a tedious affair, particularly because there is no option to “skip ahead ” even if you’ve read an entire subtitle, you’ll have to wait until the character finishes speaking. Nancy learns of new clues, suspects, and secrets mostly through conversations with the lodge’s five inhabitants, old journals, and phone conversations. Still, the progression of the story-if you can call it that-is well-paced and well-executed. Yeah, everyone’s a viable suspect with possible motives-but, really, so what? The goal of any of the suspects is simply to close down the lodge, so the stakes are barely high enough to care about.
Sure, there are bombings-but nobody dies. The plot unfolds steadily enough, but there’s never really the level of intrigue or danger that it so desperately tries to achieve.
Nancy has been hired to investigate a series of dangerous incidents, including a few explosions, at Icicle Creek Lodge, but in order to fully investigate she’ll have to pull triple duty as a maid, cook, and detective. The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, a new game “for mystery fans” from HeR Interactive, has our Nancy solving yet another puzzler at an old-fashioned lodge in the Canadian Rockies-and, as it turns out, has the player engaging in a rather clever, old-fashioned, if somewhat simple adventure game.Īs a mystery story, White Wolf is somewhat dry. But behind that pastel daisy brooch is a brain capable of solving even the toughest murders, kidnappings, and pirate treasure counterfeit schemes, and my mother’s generation seems to have gotten a kick out of it, because Nancy-at this point a sixty-year-old woman imprisoned in a teenager’s body-is still alive and well, having new adventures left, right, and even in Canada. From what I’ve seen, she’s a normal, spunky, go-getter type of small-town girl whose life is plagued with mystery upon mystery and who, at least if her new feature film is any indication, is quite a talent at accessorizing. Yeah, everyone’s a viable suspect with possible motives-but, really, so what?"
"As a mystery story, White Wolf is somewhat dry. Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek (PC) review