Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek – WII – Review

Nancy Drew has been around on the PC for several years now.
This is a good platform for these particular games, as they are traditional
point-and-click adventure games that utilize the mouse for most of the gameplay.
Recently, a Nancy Drew game was released as a TV DVD game, and it didn’t work as
well, mainly because of extremely long load times between every scene. Nancy
Drew also has a couple of DS titles under her belt, the first of which is
a decent DS game, but the second is rather lame. Now, Nancy has come to the Wii
and unfortunately, it is not that good of a match.

Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek is an adventure
game that is set in the Rockies in the United States. This Wii version is a port
of the same game, Nancy
Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, previously released on the PC. You can read
the review of the PC
version here. The basic
story revolves around Nancy trying to solve the rash of mysterious accidents and
near-disasters at the resort lodge, which seem to have something to do with an
elusive white wolf that keeps appearing around the lodge.

Like most Nancy Drew games, White Wolf is an
adventure game with traditional inventory collecting and clue gathering,
interspersed with lots of puzzles. There are also several mini-games. It has
been my experience that most adventure games just don’t translate that well to
console systems, mostly because adventure game fans are used to playing with a
mouse-driven interface. It feels awkward playing these types of games with a
gamepad. However, this is a personal preference and other players may not feel
this way.

Using the WiiMote delivers about the same experience as other console game
controls. It just doesn’t feel right, except for playing the mini-games, which
is more in line with using the console for action-oriented games. Playing these
games, such as the racing ice fishing game and the snowball fight game, is
pretty fun on the Wii. Unfortunately, though, one of the best mini-games in
White Wolf, the kitchen order game, doesn’t play as well because of the twitchy
WiiMote controls.  This game is better played with the mouse to click on
the needed items speedily, rather than the WiiMote. It makes it difficult to
complete the orders fast in order to get a better score.
 

Other than the difference in
control methods, the PC and Wii games are virtually identical. Deciding on which
game to get depends on the player’s preference.  White Wolf is a good adventure
game and is one of the better Nancy Drew games, comparatively in the middle
range of quality of these popular mystery games from Her Interactive. The price
is the only difference, $20 for the PC version and $30 for the Wii version.

Gameplay: 7
The gameplay on the
Wii works adequately, but just isn’t as good a control system as on the PC for
these types of adventure games.

Graphics: 8
The game looks good
on the Wii and is similar to the PC game of the same name.

Sound: 7
The music theme is the same as in other Nancy Drew games and fits the story line
well.

Difficulty: Medium

The puzzles and
activities range from a medium difficulty to an easy one. None of them are
overly difficult.

Concept: 6
The concept of the
adventure is presented in the same format as most other adventure games, and are
very similar to all other Nancy Drew games. Porting it to the Wii works
adequately, but doesn’t play quite as well as on the PC.

Multiplayer:  N-A
The multiplayer mode seems like
an interesting way to play, but it’s not. It just makes it all more difficult.

Overall: 7
Nancy Drew: The
White Wolf of Icicle Creek is a slightly above average adventure game for teens
and is pretty fun to play. However, this Wii version isn’t quite as good a
platform as the PC.  Adventure games play better on the PC.  Unless the player
just has to have a Wii version of Nancy Drew, I would recommend getting the PC
version, as it is cheaper.