Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion
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LOVE NANCY DREW: MESSAGE IN A HAUNTED MANSION
I find this game to be very enjoyable, and not as hard as some of Nancy Drew's other games. I will be buying another game from her very soon.....
November 27, 2011
One of Nancy's first hits.
The title may lead players to think the Mansion is loaded with ghosts lurking in creepy corners and sinister basements. Not at all. The spookiness is limited to such things as a faint sound or something moving briefly somewhere. There is nothing frightening here and the game is perfectly suitable for younger players..... as well as adults.
Message in a Haunted Mansion is an older game, Nancy's third investigation actually. It has this lovely old fashioned atmosphere that emanates from those cozy Victorian style houses built early in the century, and the scent of leather and persian carpets.
The graphics convey this old fashioned ambiance quite successfully with a chinese bedroom full of red, tapestries, and antiques, a library with its collection of old books that have sustained the assaults of time, a nicely decorated kitchen, corridors and stairwells.
The action takes place in this closed-up surrounding, from room to room until the conclusion.
Rose, the tenant of this house, wants to convert it into a B & B. Much to her worry, a series of unfortunate events and accidents puts a stop to her plans. Up to Nancy to elucidate the enigma.
Which she actually does with brio, as always.
One thing I like in the Nancy Drew series, and this one is no exception, is how you intereact with the various characters, dialoguing with them, thereby obtaining important clues and some direction and learning a little about the background story of the house and its inhabitants. But in all her conversations, Nancy has to be careful and diplomatic lest Rose might take umbrage and dismiss her. But if something goes awry there is always a "Try Again" in the form of a Second Chance Button.
Inevitably, Nancy has to solve intriguing puzzles; they all are nicely integrated in the storyline, require only common sense, but no puzzle is triggered unless she has gathered all the clues pertaining to it.
These puzzles are classics and based on logic. Nothing far-fetched, nothing out of this world, nothing left to the trial and error method, no place for random. Some are trickier than most, although perfectly solvable, and make you think deeply, others a lot easier.
Details have been pushed quite far to contribute to the rendering of an oldish and semi-eerie atmosphere: floors crack, stairs creak, doors squeak on their hinges; you hear muffled voices, footsteps and rain.
Like in another of her investigations, Nancy can set the time on her clock as certain tasks can only be performed at specific times. Nice feature.
Saying the game is easy would be wrong. It's very challenging, non-linear, and extremely immersive. The story is solid, engrossing with a fair degree of complexity, and a good ending.
Finally, the professionalism of the developers also transpires in the quality of the voice-overs, the well-worded dialogs, and the right sounds at the right moments.
A superb adventure, not overly difficult, ideal as an introduction to the world of Nancy Drew for those who do not know her yet
January 3, 2012
MHM - earliest game on BigFish
MHM is the third game in the Nancy Drew series and the first on BigFish. You, as Nancy Drew, have to investigate accidents and bad luck in an old San Francisco mansion. Is it haunted or is someone from the team trying to scare the owners away?
MHM was the second ND game I played, and I found it slightly less challenging than my first, which was CUR (but that is a hard one!) and a bit similar. It is, obviously, slightly simpler game, however, it does have its moments and the characters and mystery are as good as in any other ND game. If you like Nancy Drew, you will like this one, too.
tuskel,
sincerely
December 21, 2011
Love MHM
The graphics and sound were advanced for such an early game of the series. Will remain one of my favorite ND games.
December 31, 2011