Trail of the
Twister is the 22nd Nancy Drew adventure game in Her
Interactive’s prolific series. In this most current outing, Nancy is
deposited as an undercover member of an Oklahoma storm research team whose
equipment is being sabotaged. A $100 million prize grant is at stake, so
Nancy must pull out all the stops to discover just exactly what is going
on at the farm research base.
Along the way
we meet Scott Varnell and the members of his research team, Debbie, Frosty
and Chase. They each have their own set of motives and suspicions, but
meanwhile there’s a twister approaching. The storm must take precedence,
and there’s work to be done.
“I’ll check
back with you in a bit”
I’m imagining
Her Interactive’s development team sitting around the boardroom table and
running through their checklist for Trail of the Twister:
“We got puzzles?” “Check!”
“We got chores?” “Check!”
“We got lots o’ car drivin’ and
dagnabbit narrow country lanes?” “Check!”
“We got our collective
bodyweight in KoKo Kringles?” “Check!”
“Boy, we’re doin’ great here!
Now, we got a good, solid storyline with lots o’ detectin’, sleuthin’ and
that sort o’ stuff?” “Oh…uh… wait a minute, now…uh…”
Well, box my
ears and call me Frederick, but it appears that they clean forgot to
include a proper plot with this here game. There’s a storm research team,
and there’s an as yet unknown somebody who may or may not be sabotaging
their equipment. A prize grant is at stake. Nancy has to get to the bottom
of it. The problem with this is -- and I do consider it to be a problem --
there is such a minuscule amount of dialogue which actually pertinently
relates to the story that it might as well not exist at all. So instead,
Nancy is presented with a list of chores as long as your arm, and the
random puzzling and grunt work ensues. As thin storylines go, this is an
extra-thin-crust pizza with a barely-there cheese topping. The puzzles had
just jolly well better make up for it. And yes, they do, for the most part
-- more of which later.
The voice
acting in any Nancy Drew game is invariably of excellent quality, and
Trail of the Twister is no exception. I particularly appreciated Pa,
the owner of the general store, who carries a genuine sad poignancy
alongside his friendly outgoing demeanour. The first person point and
click interface, graphics quality and music are all comfortably
comparative with the other games in the series, no shake-ups or surprises
on that front. There are relatively few locations to visit: the farm
itself and its surrounding grounds; Pa’s store; the various static
viewpoints accessible by vehicle, and that’s pretty much it. That’s a plus
in as much as the player is not wandering around from one location to the
next, wondering what on earth they should be doing or how they should be
doing it. Trail of the Twister is a compact and well laid out
adventure.
“Have fun!”
So here we are
with our puzzles ‘n’ chores; time to dissect and make some sense of ‘em.
There are some enjoyable conundrums in Trail of the Twister; I will
not say otherwise. An excellent variety of logic problems, spatial
puzzles, gadget repair, photographic assignments and storm chart
interpretation. Some of the puzzles will require thoughtful contemplation,
but they are never so obtuse that one might visualise a cloud-bubbly “???”
over one’s head. Gameplay is fairly nonlinear, so if one puzzle is
confounding you, take a break and move on to another for a while.
One recurring
mini-game involving mice did become repetitive and an eventual grinding
chore. OK, so the farm has a mouse infestation: get over it already, and
give poor Nancy a break. The gal has more important things to do. Such as
driving her car/truck/cloud-mobile (delete as applicable) out on the open
road, for instance. Her Interactive are becoming increasingly and
worryingly overfond of giving Nancy vehicles to wreck -- er, drive. Those
of you who have played Secret of the Old Clock and/or Ransom of
the Seven Ships will have fond memories. The thing is, the vehicles in
Trail of the Twister are extremely uncooperative. If I drove
anything like this in real life then they would have locked me up and
thrown away the key years ago. I’m lethal, baby. Grass verges,
T-junctions, gargantuan trucks; I eat ‘em all for breakfast.
There are no
sliders, sound puzzles or mazes. There are the ubiquitous and humorous
Game Over screens, but you know with Nancy Drew that you always have a
Second Chance, so fear not.
Life is a
jar of Pa Pennies
Trail of the
Twister installed without any problems and played flawlessly
throughout.
In conclusion,
this would be an ideal game for anyone not overly concerned with storyline
but with a yen for some thoughtful puzzling and good-humoured fun.
