Systems > Wii > N > Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek > Staff Review
Sign up for a free user account and you can leave feedback for this review or even submit a game review of your own!
Review by Benjamin Woodhouse
February 20, 2009
Some of the guests have fixated on the titular white wolf as the cause of all the problems, since it constantly prowls the grounds. Nancy, however, chooses to focus on human suspects, and there's no shortage of suspicious characters around. Ollie, the caretaker, looks like an old ranch hand with his cowboy hat. He's stubborn, though, and doesn't take to Nancy's interference. Yanni is a world class cross-country skier, but the Eastern European is extremely paranoid, always chattering about competitors spying on him. Lou is a socially inept college student who disappears on long, solitary walks. Guadalupe spends all her time looking out the window with a pair of binoculars. Bill, a native Canadian (complete with hokey accent), seems nice enough, but all his advice seems to put Nancy in bad situations. Even her employer, Chantal Moique, is a piece of work. The manager is out of town and only speaks over the phone, but she's flaky and unreasonable. Chantal even demands that Nancy fill in as a maid and cook on top of conducting her investigation.
Thanks to her extra duties, time isn't on Nancy's side. In the upper-left corner of the screen, a persistent clock displays the current hour. She has to collect laundry by noon (though it gives her an excuse to poke around everyone's room). More trying, she must produce three square meals a day at regular times. If she frequently neglects these deadlines, Nancy gets the boot. Our detective also must watch her body temperature when poking around outdoors. Every step in the freezing air – all you can hear is the harsh wind – brings her closer to a more literal deadline. It's so tempting to maximize her exploration, thinking that she can make it just a little farther. Plus there are areas where it's easy to get confused and lost. The snowbanks look the same, after all. Dealing with rigid schedules and frigid weather make these mundane parts a little more exciting. I get a shot of adrenaline scrambling back to the kitchen with only a minute to spare, as well as from pulling open the lodge door just as frostbite is about to take hold.
The biggest rush, though, comes from solving puzzles, grasping leads, and piecing together the mystery. In Icicle Creek, the challenges stem from the founder of the lodge, an eccentric pioneer who holed up in the mountains by himself. The guy went a little crazy, setting up secret passages and underground tunnels with brainteasers for the entry keys. You'll have to decode his diary to even find the location of his most guarded puzzles. Many of these involve some combination of pattern matching and sequential steps, and can take dozens of moves to solve. There are some more familiar tasks; clearing snow off the frozen skating pond is exactly like Minesweeper. But as with Nancy's numerous other adventures, the main struggle in solving problems is just figuring out their rules and parameters.
People follow their own rules, too, and that means they're not available around the clock. Speaking to fellow lodgers can elucidate the next investigative step, but choices in conversation don't affect the game (as usual). You have to budget time to interview the guests between bursts of exploration. Unfortunately, the constraints aren't absolute. It's nice that Nancy can make empty hours disappear by setting her alarm clock and taking a nap, but there also seem to be an infinite number of days to catch the culprit. If you miss a clue one day, there's always tomorrow.
Some of Nancy's activities did undergo a motion-control facelift as Icicle Creek was ported onto the Wii from the PC. Most pervasive are the cooking controls. You'll be slicing, flipping, and grilling like any generic food preparation sim out there. Even though a recipe book is available, the game tells you what to make and the steps to take. It is sometimes slow to respond to your gestures, which can drop the evaluation of your performance. Although the quality of the food doesn't seem to matter; it just needs to get on the table. Also, it would be more fun if you didn't have to make the same three dishes everyday.
Snowball fights take advantage of the remote, too. Freddie, Ollie's daughter, won't let you pass her towering fort without defeating her in a match, and you actually have to make a throwing motion to toss the projectiles. Only one real puzzle was affected in the platform move. There is a time when Nancy finds herself trapped in the middle once frozen lake. On the PC, you had to find a safe path to shore over the remaining ice floes by trial and error. (This game maintains the series' treatment of death, returning you just to the beginning of the fateful event.) Now, you must balance Nancy on each ice sheet by using the remote as a level. It is nice to have an purely physical challenge mixed in with the mental exercises.
There are specific aspects of Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek that make it exciting. Working against the clock, even if it's ultimately inconsequential, introduces a level of urgency to the events. It also doesn't hurt that the identity of the culprit is hard to guess until the very end. The game really makes a successful transition to the Wii because its core stays intact. It maintains the difficulty of the brain-cramping problems while keeping the encroachment of the motion controls to a minimum. As long as future efforts resist the urge to go crazy with the remote, expect many more smooth ports of Nancy Drew on the Wii.
|
|
|
Most recent video game reviews written by Benjamin Woodhouse
Naruto Shippuden: Shinobi Rumble (DS) [May 24, 2011]
Heartwork (PC) [August 26, 2010]
Madden NFL 11 (Wii) [August 16, 2010]
Trauma Team (Wii) [May 17, 2010]
0-D Beat Drop (Xbox 360) [April 25, 2010]
|
You can click the tabs on the above bar to choose whether you wish to read comments from visitors who have posted on Facebook, or from registered site users who have left feedback on the forums. Please leave a comment of your own if you have anything to say!
|
|
|
Follow Us |
Advertise exclusively for 1 month... only $1000!
Recent Forum Discussions
+ Alpha Olympics 2012
+ Where's SkyWard Sword's review ? And please bring back the rating feature.
+ zippdementia's Mega Jump review
+ [News] Schafer has pitched Psychonauts 2, Minecraft dev says 'let's make it happen'
+ holdthephone's Final Fantasy XIII-2 review
+ JoeTheDestroyer's Area 51 review
+ playstation vita, yo.
+ RotW January 29 - February 04 2012
+ Games to be added to the database...
+ The Final Fantasy XIII-2 thread
+ [News] Final Fantasy X HD will be a remaster, not a remake
+ [News] Naughty Dog explored making a new Jak and Daxter, made Last of Us instead
Staff Game Reviews
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| SoulCalibur V |
| The Simpsons Arcade Game |
| Quarrel |
| Star Ocean: The Last Hope |
| Pushmo |
| Medal of Honor: Airborne |
Site Staff
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |
Featured Reviews [+]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Rayman Origins |
| Othello |
| Scarface: The World is Yours |
| The Last Express |
| Golden Axe II |
| Assassin's Creed: Revelations |
Exclusive User Reviews [+]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Mega Jump |
| White Knight Chronicles |
| Dragon Wars |
| F-Zero GX |
| Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door |
| Pokemon Snap |
Info |
Help |
Privacy Policy |
Contact |
Advertise
© 1998-2012 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site--from reviews, guides, cheats and editorials to message board posts--may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors.
