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ConnectTheDots' Review
of
--The Deadly Device --
of
--The Deadly Device --
**Bottom line:**Though not a bad Nancy Drew game, The Deadly Device is too safe, especially considering that it is the first murder mystery in ages.
Plot
Nancy is called out to a science lab in Colorado to take on a murder case that has gone cold. It’s believed that Niko Jovic, the victim, discovered the secret to wireless energy transfer, but he died before he was able to reveal his work. It’s up to you as Nancy Drew to discover who killed Niko, and why they did so.
Another murder mystery, finally! Woohoo, right? Ehh.
Characters
The characters in this game are all of the people who worked with Niko at the lab. The suspects were fine, but I did not love them. A lot of the time they did not have anything to talk about, and a couple of them cut off Nancy’s questions with just a few words or a smart aleck remark.
I thought it was interesting that not all of them had nice things to say about Niko, though.
Graphics and Setting
The graphics were great, as usual. The game was set within one building, so there was not a lot of exploring going on. I could really imagine people working in a lab like that, though.
Music
I have mixed feelings about the music. I enjoyed all of the songs, and most were pretty suspenseful, but one song was so jubilant that it ruined the mood. I still liked listening to it, though!
Puzzles, Tasks and Mini-Games
There were two mini-games in this game, a matching one and Aggregation. Aggregation is hard to describe. You had to make trios of certain shapes. I thought it was okay, but I played it once to progress the game, and did not come back to it.
There were a few times when the players asked Nancy to do things in return for them doing something for her, but this did not happen as often as it has in the past, so it did not bother me.
The puzzles went with the science theme. I am not into science, so most of them did not appeal to me, but I still found a couple of puzzles that I enjoyed. I needed a spoiler for the end puzzle, but there was a good mixture of challenging and easy puzzles otherwise.
"The Scare Factor"
This game was not scary in comparison to the other games. I felt very safe walking around that lab. There weren't even any threatening notes directed at Nancy like there usually are.
Other Odds and Ends
- The biggest problem I had with this game was the culprit. This was the first murder mystery since Secrets Can Kill, so I was really looking forward to this one even though science does not interest me. However, I thought that HER played it safe with the culprit choice for reasons that I cannot explain in my review. Also, I knew they were the culprit very early on in the game.
- I used to play the games on Junior Sleuth the first time around for my reviews, but I will no longer be doing that because the new hint system is overly helpful and too tempting to use.
- I normally don’t like talking on the phone to people, but I liked that they brought Dierdre back for this one.
THANK YOU so much for reading my review! Feel free to comment with your own thoughts. Feedback is appreciated.
I have to agree with you on the characters; they were interesting for the most part, but they didn't say too much in the middle of the game. And yes, they did give "smart aleck" remarks sometimes, which I didn't really like. I also loved the music and the puzzles, but I didn't like the ending. I agree that the culprit was pretty obvious, and the actual ending wasn't very exciting.
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