#midnight in salem review

[netscapenavigator-official]

Okay, I finally finished Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem, and thus the entire franchise (as of yet). The OG fandom hyped this game up to be the worst of the worst. However, in my opinion, it placed 15/34 in my ranking spreadsheets, below Secret of Shadow Ranch, and above Secrets Can Kill (OG Version).

The game's graphics are abysmal. I mean, I genuinely, unironically, think that Stay Tuned for Danger (the first 3D Nancy Drew game) had better graphics than this. In that game, all the character's looked like plastic mannequins... but at least they had some charm/character to them. The character models in Midnight in Salem felt like The Sims 3 graphics. As in, the character's faces were only barely different from one another, and the hair... oh the hair... it was so bad. No to mention, the world just wasn't that pretty either. It's crazy just how barren and sterile Salem felt compared to Skipbrot from Sea of Darkness.

I honestly wouldn't even be that mad at the live-rendered graphics... if the game wasn't so fucking inefficient. A game that looks like that shouldn't be able to make my M1 iMac sweat like that, but it did. I even had to turn Anti-Aliasing down and set the Resolution to 1080p just to play without lag. Not to mention, the Mac version seems to have a lot of graphical glitches (that admittedly might be caused by running the game through Rosetta 2 on an ARM Machine, but I don't know). Specifically, the worst was in the final cutscene, where a bright white light was rapidly flashing across the entire scene until the camera finally moved. It then returned once the camera return to Nancy's perspective. It was genuinely awful. For a game that took 5 years to make, and that is running the latest and greatest gaming engine, this game's graphics are hot garbage, especially compared to the previous game which was the most beautiful in the entire series. It honestly felt like I was playing one of those Unity Asset store games like House Flipper or House Party.

The animations were choppy, characters didn't stay planted on the ground and would slide around, the textures looked crusty and blurry, while simultaneously overly-sharp. In fact, the animations also felt like Unity default assets. Character's rarely, if ever, made specific motions for their words. They just stood there and played idle animations over and over. It made it feel like they weren't even talking to Nancy. Also, I noticed (at least once or twice, idk about the whole game) that the characters don't blink. Not to mention their awful, uncanny at times, mouth movements when speaking.

The plant textures were FLAT. There was no 3D effect to them at all. You could walk up to any plant, and it was as flat as a JPEG. It's crazy to me how resource inefficient this game is. A game with that graphic quality shouldn't be hard to run on a computer that can run BeamNG Drive at medium graphics through Wine and Rosetta translations layers with decent performance. I mean, I honestly think Yandere Simulator might perform better than this game.

The navigation was also horrible. You can really tell that this game was last minute switched from being free-roam to point-and-click. In perhaps a controversial opinion, I kinda wish this game would've just been free roam. It was clear that the point-and-click thing was an afterthought, and it made it so difficult to navigate around the world. Not to mention, the hit-boxes for the point-and-click system were majorly regressed. One of my biggest complaints with the early Nancy Drew games was that the hit-boxes for the click-points were small, and there was often just a bunch of dead space that made it difficult to navigate rapidly and reliably. This was fixed somewhere along the line, but in this game, the issue returns once more. The slow hover animation combined with horrible click-point hit-boxes made this a tediously slow game to navigate.

And don't even get me started on the cars. It's difficult to make good, realistic-looking 3D car models because they require more detail than most people think, but the car models in this game were awful. Hell, one of them was literally a BMW stock model without its badge.

This graphical quality of this game is just shocking, given it took 5 years to make this game (4 after the engine switch), and previous games were made in a fraction of that. Not to mention, this doesn't feel like a game that was made by a dev-team by a game studio. It feels like an Indie game that was made by one person using Unity Store assets. The visual quality is insanely bad.

My final critique is about Nancy's voice actor. Now, I'm not here to rag on Brittany Cox. Nancy's previous voice actor was icon because she literally voices her in 33 (34 counting SCK Remaster) previous games. I just got used to her. However, knowing now what I know about Lani, I can't say I'm upset that she's gone. Brittany sounds like she has a lot of potential, and if I'm being honest, my problems with how she voiced Nancy probably aren't her fault. She sounded pretty monotonous and unemotional compared to prior renditions. However, we also know HeR laid off a lot of people between this game, and its predecessor. As a result, I think it's safe to say whoever directed Lani did not direct Brittany. Brittany's portrayal honestly sounded like the voice you hear at the supermarket over the income trying to sell you rotisserie chickens at 20% off. I think Brittany has a lot of potential, and I hope her director does a better job in Mystery of the Seven Keys, but for now, I just didn't like her portrayal. It is her first game, however! If you go back and listen to Lani in Secrets Can Kill (OG) and Stay Tuned for Danger, she too sounds very different to what she eventually settled into. I hope Brittany finds a better groove with Nancy, and I'm hoping the series lives long enough for her to do so.

Now onto the positive. After all the aforementioned bullshit, what on Earth could sway me to giving this game a 19/34? The plot. I honestly feel like this is one of, if not THE best plots we've ever gotten in a Nancy Drew game. The drama was so juicy, and the foreshadowing was off the charts. I was concocting crack conspiracy theories before I even met half the cast. It was amazing to follow and so rewarding to watch play out. The Deirdre redemption arc was crazy, and I loved every minute of it.

However, I do have two notes when it comes to the Plot:

1: What tf did they do to Ned in this game?? Sea of Darkness was incredible. It honestly felt like a series finale because of how emotionally and solidly Nancy and Ned were wrapping things up. I'd never understood the Ned haters in the fandom, and by the end of Sea of Darkness I was at the peak of Ned Nickerson Apologist Mountain. However, in this game, everything is just uprooted. All the drama that is built through Ned's phone calls is never properly resolved. It was so unsatisfying watching Nancy brush it off in the end scene. Not to mention (maybe this was another Mac-only bug, but I doubt it), they didn't even bother giving Ned voiced lines in the end. It almost felt like they kept building all this relationship tension, finished up the game, and then realized that "OH SHIT! We forgot to wrap up the Ned drama" and slapped it in, last minute. It was genuinely awful. Some people often call Sea of Darkness the conclusion of the original game series and Midnight in Salem the rebooted series. This is obviously wrong because Salem was teased in the end of Darkness... but tbh, for the Ned storyline alone, I'm willing to headcanon that and believe it.

2: The ending was kinda weird. If Alicia had kept her mouth shut (which she was doing a very good job of doing), she probably could've gotten away with it. Hathorne House wouldn't have been hers, but there really wasn't any hard evidence against her for anything else. She had an excuse and alibi for everything, and she genuinely had covered all of her tracks. Maybe Jason could've gotten a plea deal and testified against her; or with Nancy, Frank, Joe, Deirdre, and Mei all knowing what they knew, she could've been successfully convicted in a court... but by the ending scene, I was fully convinced she was going to get away with it and get Nancy in trouble for breaking and entering... but then all of a sudden... out of nowhere, she just starts blabbering about everything... IN FRONT OF A FUCKING JUDGE. It felt really out of character, given how intelligent she previously was when it came to the law, and, just like the Ned wrap-up situation, this felt like an "OH SHIT!" moment where the team realized they'd gotten themselves into a corner and needed to get out of it, but didn't have time to go back and redo major story aspects, so they settled on this.

Overall, the plot is a very rewarding plot to experience, but would I play this game again? No. The graphics are awful, and even getting the game to run stably was a chore. It crashed multiple times (literally any time I took my wireless headphones out to go to the bathroom). Sometimes it even crashed at random, without warning. (Thank god this game introduced an auto-save feature.) The navigation controls were also just plain awful. While a lot of the early games were just as tedious to click on, their navigation scenes were much more predictable. In addition, those games have neo-nostalgic flare that this game just doesn't. As a result, it ranked slightly above average in my spreadsheet, but that's mainly for the plot. I, honestly, think this is the first Nancy Drew game with zero replay value because of how plot-reliant the enjoyability is. Maybe I'll come to love it. The characters were fun, but I don't know. My feelings about Nancy Drew games change as they age within my head, so maybe I'll slowly want to play this game again. For now, though, I'm glad I played it, but I'm also glad it's over, and I never have to play it again.

[callsign-fangirl]

THERES GOING TO BE ANOTHER ONE?!?!

wait the new Nancy Drew game is real and not just an elaborate fake-out to cover for HERInteractive's inevitable closure????

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

Spoiler-Free KEY Review

Alright. I finished KEY. I'm going to play it again with my sister and then probably do a more in depth review of it, but for now I've got a just-finished-it review, and we'll see how this one compares to my second review after a second playthrough.

Plot:

The plot wasn't too bad! A bit linear compared to other games but I did enjoy it. It wasn't as visual novel-y as MID but wasn't as interactive as some other games. But overall it was fun and entertaining!

Characters:

The characters were enjoyable. I liked having some characters there being only barely involved when others were SUPER involved, so we have a lot more range with suspects and suspicions. I definitely would have liked digging deeper into the characters, like in CUR and GTH and SAW and such. Although, I'll admit, in most of the other games we didn't get super deep backgrounds either. There weren't a lot of dialogue options, so maybe in the future we can get more dialogue and character deep dives! I want more substance!

The only part about the characters I actively didn't like was a certain character's hair (bro, that's some Assassin's Creed Caterina Sforza hair, Sims hair, idk but it wasn't good enough), and the random unimportant NPCs. The NPCs were a bit distracting and did take me out of the game if I paid too much attention to them, so that's my take on that. In the future, I want to random unimportant NPCs to be completely gone and I want to VEN sound design back. That was immersive without needing the actual people standing around.

Now the phone characters were almost useless, only there to push the plot forward with barely any fun shit. In the future, I NEED more interaction with them. Less texting, more actual conversations. And they don't even need to be strictly about the game, give me conversations like what we had with Savannah Woodham. Not just a phone call here or there for only the purpose of moving forward in the plot. I need weird phone calls where they're like "hello! what do you want!" and the only dialogue option is "bye!" so then you hang up. I also want to actually be able to call them, because if there isn't a plot reason for it, you can't call them. So. Yeah. Oversight from the game devs.

Controls:

This game I feel was not designed with point and click in mind. I feel like it was added as a second option while favoring the "modern" controls of free roam stuff. However, I enjoyed the free roam! Maybe this is because I play a lot of other video games that aren't point and click, but I ended up really liking it. Other than that, the controls CAN be a bit clunky to get used to, but that happens with every video game with new controls you don't know yet (when I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I punched my horse so many times because I couldn't get used to the controls and I felt so bad). I think they could definitely work on it more, but it is WAY better than Midnight in Salem. Way WAY better.

Music:

While not as iconic at the Kevin Manthei tracks I am in love with, I did like the music! It was pretty good, with some tracks standing above the others. I will say though that the track that plays in the tech store is my least favorite as it just sounds... meh. In every sense of the word.

Puzzles and Minigames:

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. There are actually puzzles!!!! After all, what, two puzzles in Midnight in Salem, we actually get REAL PUZZLES! They have some new puzzles, some recycled puzzles (THAT I WANT MORE OF), some pretty puzzles, some clunky but fine puzzles, and just a good variety of them. They also offer hints if you are struggling.

I think my favorite puzzle is... Well, I don't want to spoil it, but there are a few contending for the top place. (Although fuck math, all my homies hate math.)

As for the minigames, the coffee making is fun, although a bit daunting with the instructions. I recommend making your own notes aside from the in-game recipe books. The latte art can be irritating but eventually you get the hang of it. Not quite as bad as the SAW calligraphy but nowhere near the delight I got from the SPY cookies minigame.

Glitches and Issues:

I did catch a few typos and a few glitches, but they weren't the norm. Just look at the HeR site for what to look out for, and make sure your PC can handle the game. I didn't need to look out for that since I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and my laptop is running that fine (on low graphics lol). Way less messed up than MID, worse than some of the other games, but hey, it's not like we've never had bugs in the games before (there have been a few times the games have crashed on me because of bugs). And this time we have autosaves to help out with that.

Overall Impression:

It's a solid game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the UI and controls are still similar to MID, the game itself is a step in the right direction where I want the Nancy Drew games to go. It isn't perfect, I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Nancy Drew game, but it's good enough for me.

I'm happy with it. I got to have the joy of a new Nancy Drew game, which is something I haven't had since Midnight in Salem, and we know how that went. I got to find new clues, see new places, meet new characters, complete puzzles that were both new and recycled, and enjoy a new mystery. It brought a smile to my face multiple times and made me squeal in delight when I solved something. I haven't had a good new Nancy Drew game experience since I played SEA when it came out.

So I'm happy. Is it my favorite? No. But do I think it's bad? Also no. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but that's okay. These games make me happy, and I hope we get more so they can continue my happiness in the future.

Tentative rating: 7/10

[argonianprince]

Infinite thanks to the Nancy Drew subreddit for compiling purchasing information on the new game.. sadly the release for Steam downloads and physical copies of the game is currently "summer 2024." Hopefully this information turns out to be accurate.

Kudos to everybody bold and/or tech savvy enough to actually use the direct download system through HerInteractive's webbed site, which is a bit notorious and doesn't allow you to re-download your games indefinitely (so you have to re-purchase them or buy a physical medium to keep the files on) and isn't compatible with some modern OS versions. Trying not to be too salty about this, since the company is doing what they think is best for them to stay afloat.

I'm seeing mixed reviews of KEY (vastly improved from the mostly negative response to Midnight in Salem), and am so happy to have a new ND game to get excited about again!! ^=^ The fact that there is a cast of nine characters (or suspects?? That would be cool!! If they are all suspects?!?) is really intriguing too.

[waitmyturtles]

(Please forgive me if any of this has already been written — I haven’t gone through all the reviews on the tag yet!) I have ZERO BUSINESS commenting on Midnight Museum, considering I only began watching from episode 5 ONLY for the guest stars, but since friends are puzzling over the plot, and it’s as confusing to me as I’m seeing in the reviews, I just want to say:

1) There is clearly a mishmash of religious/spiritual commentary happening here. I know far too little about the influence of Hinduism on the history of the Thai cultural spectrum, but give me an ashram and castes (and spiritual figures keeping people out of religious spaces for their castes), and I’ll say that’s a commentary on gatekeeping in sub-continentally-influenced regions.

2) Couple that with a burning at the stake. Could this have been a reference to the American Salem Witch Trials? I feel like that’s a REALLY specific American reference in a Thai show. The Spanish Inquisition also had burnings at stakes. So maybe that’s a reference as well?

3) In trying to parse Khatha and Chan/Dome’s situation, what’s really coming to my mind by way of comparison is Achilles and Patroclus. Achilles and Patroclus of the Iliad were… what, exactly? Certainly companions. Maybe friends? Likely lovers — likely lovers, as was common during the time of Homer, when subordinate male soldiers served as… what, exactly — companions, friends, lovers, to more powerful soldiers.

It’s foggy. It’s assumed, but our assumptions in modern times do not account for the unspoken cultures that were assumed for Homer’s time. History can be foggy…. as is being portrayed in Midnight Museum.

But besides the lovers bit (ship ship ship), here’s what I think are the important parts:

a) Patroclus was adopted by Achilles’s father. They were raised in the same family — but it’s not clear if they were raised as brothers, per se, or more like supportive friends/companions. Some theorize that Patroclus was kind of like a servant-friend to Achilles (even though Patroclus was older than Achilles — so that may indicate a kind of caste-or-class-like difference there, too).

b) It’s often written that Achilles allowed Patroclus to die. Patroclus asked Achilles to enter the Trojan War. Achilles consented. After Patroclus defied an order from Achilles, Patroclus was killed.

It was Patroclus who defied an order — but at least, when I read and learned about the Iliad in college, it was taught that his death was attributed to Achilles.

c) As we all know, Achilles also had a “weak leg,” but Patroclus, of course, didn’t heal Achilles’s tendon. I think the healing parable there is just Patroclus’s companionship to Achilles, who was known as a totally fearsome warrior.

In the show, we are told that Khatha was the one who killed Chan. But we don’t see Khatha lighting the fire. We just see Chan cursing Khatha.

I’m not sure we can trust history here. And I don’t know how to put this all together. (And I have almost no idea of why Ton/Nanon came back, which was why I watched this episode in the first place, dammit.)

But the last thing I’ll say is:

4) There is a goddess in Hinduism named Devi. Devi is often referred to as “The Mother.” Many have called her “The One.” What Devi represents is the “oneness” of the world — that while there are countless practices, countless deities, countless ways of being, that Devi represents that we are all ultimately As One. Wikipedia has Devi down as representative of “ultimate truth and supreme power.”

I’ll say again that I have really no idea what’s happening with the plot. But I wonder if awllllll of these spiritual references are beginning to coalesce under that figure known as The One (and hell, I might tell a whole bunch of Indian aunties that a Thai show might be serving GUN ATTHAPHAN as an avatar of Devi—those home shrines could look a whole lot different).

The One is making Khatha face… something. Truth? Foggy history? The theme of the show is The Witch’s Game, and Anthikka has referenced a Creator in previous episodes, so maybe truth seeking is all a game to her and her god. What I’m honestly wondering about this show is whether or not it is a huge, confusing, macro commentary on the crazy-ass diversity of religion/spirituality/mythology, and how it can lead to the perception of various realities, as it were, when in fact — we are all just One Humanity, One Truth, and we are possibly fucking each other over by way of our selfish preferences (as Khatha wanted Chan all to himself) (but then Khatha let Chan go) (so Chan dies) (and Khatha is to blame).

I…. I just feel like there might be a simpler way to explain all of this in a drama, but who am I to be critical? At least the acting is great, even if Gun has to play like, five or six roles!

[oneofusnet]

Screener Squad: Salem's Lot SALEM’S LOT MOVIE REVIEW Let the right one in this fall season and commune with Bradly, Drew, and Melina as they partake in a midnight mass of vampire cinema forged from the mind of Stephen King at the pique of his spooky scary powers. Written and directed by Gary Dauberman, Salem’s Lot is a modern re-telling of Nosferatu that also happens to take place in the long away time of bell bottoms and Disco Fever, the 70’s. Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) is a writer suffering a terrible block. For inspirations sake, he returns to his childhood home in Salem’s Lot.… Read More »Screener Squad: Salem’s Lot read more on One of Us

[ciegeinc]

Movie Review...Salem's Lot

(2/5) Experiencing this film without the baggage of its predecessor was refreshing. Given my dislike for the Hollywood machine pumping out remakes and delayed sequels, not seeing the original allowed no bias when viewing this remake.  But I could not help but notice its similarities to a newer body of work, Netflix’s Midnight Mass. The connection to Midnight Mass is undeniable, as the latter draws heavily from the former's narrative fabric. However, Midnight Mass manages to refine and elevate this story-line, delivering a more compelling and polished rendition. It's fascinating to observe how modern adaptations can breathe new life into classic tales, sometimes even surpassing their original inspiration.  This remake offered nothing new in terms of scares or vampire lore.

Author Ben Mears returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot in search of inspiration for his next book only to discover his hometown is being preyed upon by a bloodthirsty vampire (rottentomatoes.com).

[nxncydrews]

midnight in salem: a review

Your girl finally beat Midnight in Salem last night and...I have thoughts. Feelings. Concerns. But also hope? This review is like a year late but whatever. Overall, I didn’t hate the game nearly as much as I thought I would, and I was fully prepared to loathe it. Spoilers are under the cut for anyone who hasn’t played it yet! (also...it’s long lol)

The general gist of it is this: Midnight in Salem is an okay game. There are some glaring issues that I’ll talk about in more detail, but there is a foundation that I feel is strong for the future. Even with the problems I saw I don’t think MID is the weakest in the series (MED and RAN still claim those spots). Let’s break it down.

Good: the mystery. Although I guessed Teegan’s role in the fire early on, I thought the overall storyline was compelling and that they did a good job of intertwining the characters and motivations in ways that wasn’t super obvious. The one problem I did have with the story is I felt like I couldn’t follow up with characters as much as I wanted to. For example, you can go upstairs in the museum and discover pretty early on that the Parry family changed their name from Parris but you can’t ask Teegan about it until she brings it up much later in the game—and even then it’s not something you prompt, it’s something she just gives up.  I also think I found out about things in dialogue before I was supposed to as though branches of the dialogue tree were incorrectly crossed. Despite that, I think the mystery was good...just needed a little more refining to pull it all together. There were also a few threads that didn’t get tied up (do we just assume that Jason mimicked Olivia’s smoke bombs because he watched her in the square?). 

Bad: the linearity. The thing that I loved (and hated) about past games was that you could hit moments where it wasn’t always clear where you were supposed to go next. With MID, however, you were led from location to location with little reason to return to other places when you finished the single task you needed to do. You would start at the Parry’s house, go to town square, make one trip out to Hathorne House, go back to the town square and repeat the next with a random trip to Lauren’s shop instead of Hathorne. And with the lack of locations to begin with...it just felt like it was a small game without much to do. That said, some of my favorite games have had a much smaller setting (TRT, for example) and did it well. So perhaps this issue could’ve been fixed with more complexity added to the puzzles and additional side quests.

Good: the voice acting and characters. Look, I loved Lani as Nancy Drew and she will always have a special place in my heart, but the new voice of Nancy has won me over. She’s got the exact type of energy I imagine and had a more modern voice. I do think she was one of the weakest voice actors in the game (random lines seemed to feel out of place emotionally, but that could just as much be on the editing team as the voice actor), but I still liked her overall. The rest of the voice cast was also great, which helped to carry a script that I felt was weak at moments—there were times when the dialogue was just...bad. The characters as a whole felt unique and fun, and I really loved the interactions between Deirdre and the Hardy Boys. I would argue that the strongest part of the game is the characters, even if I do think they could’ve gone further with some of the friendships and relationships that were hinted throughout the game (Judge Danforth and Jason, Mei and Jason, Teegan/Olivia/Lauren, etc). I also liked that the characters felt more alive...moving around, in multiple places, etc. The positioning of characters when they followed you was...unfortunate at times. Deirdre scared me every time I turned around and navigating the tunnels at the end of the game was nearly impossible with how characters constantly blocked your view. 

Bad: the graphics. This is obviously something that has been complained about since the beginning, and it’s for good reason: the graphics were lackluster. I have a pretty good laptop so I was able to play on high settings, but even then they weren’t nearly as good as I was expecting for how long they worked on the game. The character models are one of the most glaring issues: choppy and awkward animations, a lack of texture and shadows, and those really freaky eyes. The environments, though slightly better, still felt as though they were built from unity assets that the developers picked up off online stores and threw together. I couldn’t stand looking at the leaf piles on the ground or the street outside the Parry house because they were so incredibly flat. The final puzzle scenes felt better to me, as did Olivia’s shop and even the graveyard, so it’s clear that they can do better, but that level (or even higher level) of detail needs to be present in everything. The lighting is another huge issue—it was extremely flat in most parts of the game and took away a lot of the mood that could’ve been set. That said, I think graphics can be improved....if they put in the money and resources.

Good: the puzzles and interact-able objects. The puzzles that we did have in the game were fun and varying, which I think is important in mystery games. Some of the controls in the puzzles were really frustrating (more on the controls later), but there wasn’t a puzzle that I flat-out couldn’t solve. I also liked the way we could rotate objects and see all sides of them but again, the controls were a little frustrating. 

Bad: the number of puzzles. There just wasn’t enough puzzles for me, particularly puzzles that directly affected the storyline. For example, you can find a ripped-up note in the trash can in the Parry house but it’s never referenced again and you don’t actually need to do it to solve the mystery. Same with the piece of the flyer you find in the scarecrow. I think I saw a reddit thread or a post here that suggested things with book sorting or doing stuff with displays in the museum as additional puzzles and I 100% agree that they’d be great (and easy) additions to the storyline. Or maybe even helping Olivia with doing her store inventory (as we see on her list that she clearly doesn’t want to do it). 

Good: the mini-games. I loved the pumpkin quest and making johnny cakes (though I wish we could’ve actually made the various recipes and not have done the flipping part 6 times). I also loved making the herb mixtures! I honestly don’t have any complaints here. I think there was a good amount of them and they were fun to come back to.

Bad: the controls. While I appreciate what HER was trying to do with the controls, I really don’t think they worked. The “looking around” in a scene is cool in theory, but the actual act of dragging around an object was tedious and frustrating. The movement through the town square was really annoying, too—it took me forever to get from one side to the other. I think the yellow glow around the cursor when you found something to interact with could be a little more prominent, too. I think if HER wants to continue using this setup then they need to fix the cursor sensitivity to deal with how slow looking around a scene can be when dragging. I think we also could’ve done with a way to read the logs of conversations because I definitely missed a few things when I looked away for a second. 

Good: Deirdre. Shannon. I love her. So much. She’s absolutely fantastic. Her snark was great and I really appreciated how they gave her autonomy and actively contribute to the case. I would’ve loved for her to be playable (like maybe we follow her to do research on the town or search for the will), but I can’t complain about the amount we saw her. Her scenes with the Hardy Boys were some of my favorite in game....and I really hope we continue to have her as a phone contact in future games (if not see her in person again!). 

Bad: no charm. Despite some high points with characters and the mystery, overall this game just lacked the charm of the past. I know some of this stems from moving to Unity and the subsequent changes to graphics and models, but I really feel like so much of the uniqueness to the games was stripped away as well. There are some easy changes that I think could fix this, starting with the UI and dialogue display and working to improve the lighting and character models. Nancy Drew needs a small amount of grittiness, I think, and a clean, modern look just doesn’t feel right. 

Good: throwbacks to old games. I appreciated that there were some throwbacks to old games mixed in as you went and that some of our old familiar easter eggs popped up (Koko Kringle candy, for one!). I like to think that the black cats in Olivia’s shop were throwbacks to Suki from SAW (though that one is unlikely) and there was also a mention of a Waverly Academy, though I think this was either a mistake or unintentional because the letter is for an art school and Waverly was a boarding school. I was hoping for a Kate Drew reference when on the phone with Carson, but alas. Here’s hoping they continue to bring past games into new ones. 

Bad: the lack of depth. I felt like overall the game only scratched the surface of what it could’ve in terms of bringing in more history and complexity. The lack of puzzles and overly-linear story made it a pretty quick solve and the characters, though interesting, could’ve done with more interaction with each other. More puzzles, more history, and more side quests could’ve helped with this immensely. (Oh, and get rid of the ridiculous side love triangle and manufactured drama with Ned and Nancy. That’s something worth it’s own post, however.)

tl;dr I wouldn’t go so far to say that MID was a roaring success or met the expectations I had for the game, but I do think there is hope for the future if we get more games. The mystery was solid and there are some good things that came from it, but they’ve got a lot of work to do to bring the next game back to the quality level that we saw in past eras. If anything, this did make me want to play through all the old games in order again, which I haven’t wanted to do in years. 

Time to go open photoshop and make all the Mei/Jason and Frank/Deirdre graphics and get back in the edit game!  

[jane-penvellyn-of-blackmoor]

Nancy Drew #33 Midnight in Salem Game Review

So I gave in and paid the damn $30 to play the dribble that HER's pawning off as their latest game. While there has been major controversy within the fandom over the latest Nancy Drew Game and HerInteractive in general, I'm going to stick to just the game here. My thoughts and opinions on how HER managed the fandom after Penny Miliken came onto the scene have been made clear on my sh!tposts on my blog lol. So we're talking just the game here, nothing pre-start menu - that includes real world HerInteractive drama, none of that. So let's begin...

The Start Menu - Tbh I hated the start menu. It was like a FNAF game's opening menu, clearly made in Unity and the grass textures were nightmarish. If this were my first Nancy Drew game and this was the first sight I saw upon booting the game up, I would never buy another one again.

Voice Acting - Now before ya'll go off on "That's just your nostalgia talking, give it a chance" I will have you know that I tried, I really really tried to like the new voice actress for Nancy but ugh I can't stand it. She sounds like someone pretending to be Olivia Benson off Law & Order: SVU. Like I get they wanted Nancy to sound more like a modern teenager and less "Barbie voice" like Lani's voice would stray towards but letting go of Lani was their biggest mistake. If they had kept Lani as Nancy's voice - especially for such a drastically different game setup - would have helped keep fans fixed within the Nancy Drew world that we've been following for years. Everyone else was great, I especially liked Mei and Lauren's voices and the emotions expressed within them. Also Tourist Girl outside of the Town Hall needs to be brought back in the next game and have her lines recorded on actual recording equipment because what you did HerInteractive was hysterically pathetic and unfair. I don't know if that was a place holder that got overlooked or what but for a $30 game released by a company with so many quality games under it's belt - I expect better.

Storyline - Was pretty good. Fire, robberies, political unrest, sabotage, fraud, hidden wills, all things we've seen before a dozen times but they never get old. I think it's safe to say that the storyline itself is actually what kept me playing, however about half way through I did know it was one of two suspects who was the villian and the very next reveal ensured me which one it was. Still though good story.

Script - Whoever was in charge of the character conversations, for the love of all that is holy please water the interactions down! I felt like 99% of the game was never ending conversations about crap that wasn't useful to the plot. Like filler and fluff is great but conversations that drag on and on and on aren't fun. Have a character say a line or two, then it's Nancy's turn - all this monologuing has me flying through conversations just so I can move onto the next thing. Also some of the way the lines are written make it hard for the actors to read and sound authentic. Like "I can not." (versus "I can't.") levels of unauthentic lines.

Characters - Loved the different characters, would have appreciated more that had models you could interact with.

Puzzles - Needed way more puzzles. Like WAY more. It felt like there was less than 10 puzzles in the game and the majority were stupid easy, the only 'difficult' ones were easy once you understood what they wanted you to do which for some reason wasn't made clear at the start of the puzzle.

Mini Games - Loved making Johnny Cakes and mixing herbs.

Graphics - Horrific. I played on the highest settings of graphics on my HD computer, I had zero issues with it rendering or playing through as intended and smoothly - the graphics were still shit. I've seen better graphics in Barbie's Horse Adventures or The Sims 3. If you're entire argument of shifting onto Unity was for better graphics, HerInteractive, then you need to deliver and you failed miserably at that.

Navigation - I actually had zero issue with the 'swoosh' way we moved around. At times it felt a little restrictive (like in Town Square getting around the stage) but it was fine. I just actually didn't care for the camera tilt feature, it made things ten times more complicated trying to figure out what nooks and crannies they wanted you to notice and which they didn't. I'd happily go back to the old navigation and old engines but I'm fine with the new one so long as they work on making it better.

Cursor - Hated the new cursor, bring back the magnifying glass plz.

Location - I felt that the location of Salem, MA. wasn't utilized to it's fullest potential and that the layout of the town square and the maps of the city were surprisingly unsimilar to IRL Salem. I liked the aesthetic of Lauren's Shop, The Cemetary, The Hathorne House, and Olivia's Store but all of those locations fell victim to the game's graphics, still though props to the designer of those locations in the game.

Austrian Castle - This was jarring. To have a game so drenched in it's location of Salem then it starts off in Austria, it was weird. I get it that they were like "It's connected to the Salem Witch Trials cuz of da Judge dude" but it was super unnecessary and felt like a strange sub-plot location to a game set in Salem, MA. 

Music - I liked the music, felt a little Harry Potter-ish at times and the 'indie rock' music they had that had zero lyrics was annoying but overall it was fine.

Witchy Stuff - I myself am a real practitioning witch, I am an ecclectic pagan wiccan and I know I am in the minority here but some of the puzzles were obnoxiously easy if you know anything about witchcraft. Like even the most basic level of witchcraft. If you ever skimmed through a wicca book in highschool with your edgy friends than you already know more than this game expects you to know. What pissed me off is that it's never actually explained to you. Like they bring up Samhain and fling the word around so it's all spooky and mystifying but they never once have a book or person discuss real Witchcraft with you. Like yeah Olivia is a 'real witch' or whatever and Lauren teaches you about mixing some herbs but it's still not like "Here is The Wheel of the Year, These are Sabbats and Esbats, This is an Athame, This is what we use brooms for we call them Besoms, etc" like the fact that we didn't get a wise old lady who was a clear rip off of Laurie Cabot teaching us about real Witchcraft in a very censor friendly and warm way pisses me off to no end. MISSED OPPORTUNITY HER!!!

Nancy's Behavior - So many times in this game Nancy behaved out of character to me. Like I get it, ya wanted to be all like "let's challenge her belief in ghooooosts!!" but it wasn't done correctly. Nancy wouldn't react to seeing ghosts like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Call Backs/Easter Egg - I appreciated the Easter Egg in this game being a literal colorful egg but it was a lame spot to hide it considering it was in plain view. However I appreciated the call backs to previous games with KoKo Kringles, Robotic Cats, and the Dear Sweet Charlotte jack-o-lantern.

Ghosts and Jumpscares - 10/10 best aspect of the game by far. The witch ghost over the bed actually got me really good and the ghosts in the underground tunnels were the best graphics of the game.

Pumpkins - Another charming part of the game that I actually enjoyed more than I anticipated. It was really cute and a fun stupid little thing to work on through out the game to find all the candles and put a pumpkin on each one.

Hardy Boys - PLEASE BRING THEM BACK FOR MORE GAMES AND NEVER STOP THE FRANCY SHIPPING. Also I could be tempted for Joe/Deirdre shipping js.

Overall - I'd rate the game a 4/10 and that's being nice. I liked it more than RAN but that’s really not saying much. It doesn’t come close to classic Nancy Drew Games.

Final Thoughts - I can't see any person who isn't a die hard Nancy Drew fan playing this and being like "Yeah I'll buy more of HerInteractive's future games!" like no. But I do see potential. I can see this as a beautiful beginning on a new platform making more immersive games. Or you know this could be the last game we get from HER and they close and go bankrupt and get flushed away and then the Miss Clue crew buys the rights for Nancy Drew and they make new Nancy Drew Games on the old platform with the old team....whichever works just fine for me :)

[hidden-clue]

MiD Review

So yesterday, for Hallowen, I finished MiD the first time ever! Last time I played it my expectations were so high up I started crying 15 minutes into it and quit. But this time, with my expectations rammed deeply into the ground, it was…. not that bad.

I’ll start with everything I liked, and thats mini-games! I loved making and giving everyone pancakes! Loved herb mixing! Loved how you could find additional herbs and make truth serum! Loved giving it to everyone! Mini games that bring you additional content is excellent idea! And pumpking carving got me soo excited I actually based my irl pumpkin on their design! I also loved seeing my pumpkins in cut scenes, it felt like I personally decorated this town for Halloween.

I loved that there was so many female characters! Loved that little bit going thru the forest! I liked that the game had underground tunnels! I liked the old witchy puzzles that reminded me of Castle Malloy! I love that the theme was witches! I’m personally very invested in information about the witch trials and I appreciated all info we got on it. I liked the hidden passage in the library! I loved Mei and Deirdre and Joe! The music was so good and spooky and set a great mood for Halloween.

I liked how personal the story got and how invested everyone was in solving it, plot-wise it was brilliant to have the answer to original mystery “who set the fire” answered at midpoint and for the goals of characters to shift into finding Mei and the will. I liked how Nancy went off at the judge at the end!

Now, for the disliked parts.. graphic was obviously a wreck, I could see soo many pixels, why were the windows at the museum showing it was dark outside even during the day? Even tho they were going for fall witchy mood, I mostly got it from music because the game was too bland look wise, it was like being in any other random game, even tho we had many locations they all looked so modern, decorated with minimalism alone, to the point where it felt like they only existed for few days and had no history or tradition in it. I miss old messy places with piles of junk on them.

Even tho we had many suspects this time, they were all completely bland, only Mei showed some personality and I love her so much for it; when her message said “Sorry to break it to you, but I’m ghosting you” my mouth dropped, that is savage! Deirdre and Hardy boys were themselves but others were just 2-3 stereotypes put together and felt bland. They had stories but no personality.

I think this game went way too hard on Mei, in the beginning she’s already an outcast, her face is burned, she looks unusual, she’s unsociable and carrying weight of protecting other’s crimes, and she’s a kid at this point. Did we also need to have her drugged and unconscious underground, then broken down in a wave of panic and paranoia and death fear so she’d desperately confess everything and have emotions forcefully dragged out of her? It was too much. No other character in ND was tortured that far before and my heart hurts for her. I don’t like that we left her in that house with Teegan who obviously puts her last.

So drama with Ned is ridiculous at this point, it always feels like they’re on a brink of a breakup lately and if they did break up and Nancy got with literally anyone else it would be the most exciting thing ever, I root for Deirdre, they flirted a lot this game! Especially with the truth serum involved, loved that bit! I thought Frank would also confess love to Nancy if given the serum but he sensed it was coming and refused, aww.

I never suspected Alicia even a little bit, because I saw her and immediately recognized her as a black woman, even though it was subtle, it was there, and I thought, surely we’re not, in our year of 2020, making black women the villains? Surely that would be tone deaf and tactless and messed up? And… I was wrong. It’s exactly what the game did and it felt WRONG. Watching the end made my stomach turn, black woman causing damages to society in order to steal property and build her own fancy complex while cutting off a place from its history? It sounds a LOT like something some other people… did… to black people in general.

I suspected Teegan the entire time, I was only partly right. It wasn’t even anything she did, just her character had an evil glint in her eyes on the phone pic.

Anyway, it was sorta fun in some places, messed up in others, very frustrating to move around, wish it wasn’t virtual reality, wish conversations weren’t so weird, I do admit it was hilarious to call people while standing in front of them, I had Mei tell me she’s ghosting me while I was looking at her eyes directly lmao. I will be back to replay the minigames the next Halloween, and to hear the soundtrack again. So… 4.5/10.

[defectivenancydrew]

MID Review (finally)

Now that I’ve had a while to reflect on MID, I feel like I can give an honest, spoiler-free review. This turned out to be a much more in-depth review than I had planned on doing, but you can just read the italics at the end of each section if you just want the gist.

Controls: Okay, so for like the first fifteen minutes (or however long it takes you to adjust), the controls are frustrating. Once you get used to how to move (and it is still point-and-click), you’ll be fine. The only thing that I still didn’t have a solid grasp of by the end of the game was moving Nancy’s head around with the right mouse button--it might have helped to slow the mouse down for this function. That being said, the controls offer a lot to the game. The environments and navigation feel more realistic, and instead of jumping from scene to scene, Nancy slides through the space. It’s weird at first, but it’s ultimately superior. (Just for kicks, I went back and played a bit of LIE as a comparison, and the jumpy movement felt so weird after the smoothness of MID). Controls get a 8/10 for the steep learning curve and the more realistic movement.

Graphics: They’re not that bad, okay? On high render, the environments actually look really good and the characters are decent (low render is an understandably different story). Given the technical reasons behind the graphics looking as the do (full 3D render here versus painstakingly painted video files before), I don’t think that they’re really that bad. Puzzle renders and zoomed-in items/POIs really shine, appearing arguably better than previous games. It’s also important to consider what SCK/STFD look like compared to SEA--MID obviously looks better than SCK/STFD, but it has room for improvement. Just like the development team refined the graphics on their proprietary engine, they will refine the graphics on Unity over time. Again, looking back to the first three games, there is a huge jump in graphics quality between each game, indicating their ability to improve quickly. I’m willing to best that the next game (yes, I believe there will be a ‘next game’) will look much better than MID, and so on from there. Character renders are not as great, but this, too, is likely to improve and is probably also due to the fact that it’s 3D and not a painted video file. Their movements may be awkward, but the fact that they are mo-cap means that they may improve in future games. The only real gripe I have about the characters is the lack of facial expressions. Graphics get a 7/10 for up-close realism and room for improvement.

Performance: If you have a gaming PC or a relatively new device, you should be golden. The game runs smoothly at high render on my 2018/i7/SSD PC, but has some lagging issues at high render on my 2014/i5/HDD PC (issues that all but disappear by adjusting to low render). For those with older PCs or PCs with less processing-power, you may have to deal with way-off lip-syncs and choppy cut scenes if you also want to see the best possible graphics. The game only crashed once on my older PC (and it was more likely due to unrelated background processes I was running), but the autosave feature prevents crashes from being anything more than a brief annoyance. Performance gets a 6/10 for high requirements and the Sophie’s Choice of graphics or speed.

UI: I love the sleek, full-screen appearance and minimalist inventory/phone bar. If I had to ask for any improvements here, I might suggest that the inventory collapse into a bag icon when it’s not in use. UI gets 10/10 for maximizing space and minimizing distractions.

Environment (independent of graphics): HeR definitely stepped up their game (heh) on this front. While there are arguably no more locations to explore than in SEA, the environment is far more expansive and cohesive. You feel like you are in a small town (Salem), and you have the freedom to explore all the relevant places without jumping around or magically transporting. There’s only one location that is distant from the town center, and Nancy travels via car to get back and forth, which adds a dose of realism. We have our usual forest navigation (though it is mercifully straight-forward, unlike DOG or CAP), with the added bonus of looking around and using it to get from one place to another. The game makes good use of each space, though it’d be nice if there was more to do in certain lesser-used locations. Some of the locations really only seemed to be present to flesh out the whole environment--which is fine--but it’d be nice to utilize those locations a bit more. And when graphics are set high, the environments are quite stunning. The lighting and weather also do a good job of reinforcing the current atmosphere in-game. Environment gets a 9/10 for cohesion and light usage.

Characters (independent of graphics, story): This is probably one of the spots where MID won me over. Not only do we have eleven (11!) official characters, we have background characters that make the setting real! I didn’t count, but there were probably 10+ background characters that were present for minor commentary and realistic liveliness. For the first time in a Nancy Drew game, I wasn’t questioning where the rest of the world was. Yes, their movements were awkward and if your computer couldn’t handle the graphics, then their lips were flapping in mysterious ways, but they moved around and interacted with each other in semi-human ways. It is absolutely baffling to me that there are people who think there were too many characters. For one thing, we as fans asked HeR for more characters and that’s what they gave us. For another, the game never felt crowded. There were seven characters that were considered “main” that you interacted with often, three side characters that you interacted with occasionally, and one character that you only interacted with once. If they hadn’t been fully-formed characters with solid backstories, I might be persuaded that the number was an issue, but almost all of the characters were fully- or mostly-developed. Characters gets a 10/10 for quantity and quality.

Puzzles: This is probably the one facet of the game where it is most clear that HeR listened to fans’ requests. We asked for more realistic puzzles that were integrated into the game play and not totally irrelevant. That’s what we got. For some people, I think this made it seem like there were fewer puzzles, but I think there were just as many as before, it just wasn’t always super obvious that you were solving a puzzle (and they all but eliminated chore-type puzzles). The cooking mini game and serving mini game were both fun, nostalgic time-wasters in the best of ways. Another nice thing about the puzzles was that they weren’t super difficult as long as you were paying attention, so there wasn’t any need to google solutions or get frustrated. Puzzles get a 9/10 for fan service and perception (after all, perception is reality).

Story: MID really shines when it comes to the story line. The game delves into the full history of Salem, rightfully choosing to discuss topics that were always skirted in earlier games (prejudice, discrimination, slavery, torture, etc.). My only issue regarding the presentation of history is that a lot of the learning is optional, and can be easily ignored or missed. The actual story line of the game is well-established and doesn’t have any gaping plot holes (at least that I noticed on my first play through). There are multiple crimes to solve, multiple items to recover, and thus multiple endings/outcomes to achieve. I can’t go into too much more detail without spoiling parts of the game, but suffice it to say that the story has depth and gravity that might even place it ahead of previous games. Story gets a 10/10 for more mature themes and multiple, successfully interweaving story lines.

Dialogue: While the content of the dialogue is great and forms the foundation for much of the story, it loses me in presentation. First, the line-by-line captioning system is awkward at best, and a monologue behind at worst. I see no reason not to present the player with sentences or paragraphs at a time as before. Second, dialogue options are not so much options as dialogue tasks. You have questions you can ask, but there is no choice of how to ask them or how to respond to an answer. For the most part, you are just choosing the order in which to ask things. This, in my opinion, is a step backward from the previous games, where Nancy could be optimistic, pessimistic, direct, or passive-aggressive. Lastly, there is a strange lack of subject in Nancy’s sentence structure at times. She says “should do xyz” instead of “I should do xyz,” or “wanted to ask about abc” instead of “I wanted to ask you about abc.” While this isn’t really too weird in the context of modern speech patterns, it is still a little awkward. There are examples of this in previous games when Nancy speaks to herself, but never in dialogue with other characters. Again, this isn’t a big deal, but it crops up enough to make it noticeably strange. Dialogue gets a 6/10 for solid content and poor presentation.

Music: At first, the music seems to be nothing special; the main theme is quiet, unassuming, and a bit repetitive at times. But much like the rest of the game, it gets better as you progress. The music in Luminous Infusions and at the end of the game really stick out as great pieces, although the rest of the tracks are also very well-composed. There is thematic continuity between tracks and the tracks also reflect the game’s current atmosphere well. The music, while from a new composer, is still reminiscent of the old games, particularly the mystical tracks in CUR. I’m hoping HeR releases a soundtrack for MID in the future, but I do know there are no current plans for an official soundtrack (though you can find unofficial ones on YouTube pretty easily). Music gets a 10/10 for quality and cohesion.

Nancy: Nancy finally sounds like the late teen that she is meant to be! Nancy is witty and assertive, no longer speaking with the voice of a thirty-year-old and expressing the thoughts of a thirteen-year-old. The new voice actress is just what Nancy’s voice needed, in my opinion, though I have admittedly been a supporter of replacing Lani since about DED/GTH (don’t get me wrong, I love Lani and she will always be the classic voice of Nancy in my head, but I could also admit that her voice was losing its spark and pep). It takes a little while to get used to the new voice, but once it stops sounding different, it’s easy to fall in love with. Another great aspect of Nancy 2.0 is that she’s willing to get into it with other characters, even if they are in a position of authority. Nancy has always been an assertive character who stands up for what is right, even if it’s not easy to do. We see the return of this kind of Nancy in MID, and I hope we don’t lose her in future games. The only thing that I found a tad bit odd was how sugar-sweet Nancy was toward Deirdre. I like how their relationship was updated in order to model more appropriate/healthy female friendships, but it is a little weird considering the canon interaction model set forth by ASH and DED. Nancy’s other relationships have also matured and improved. Nancy gets a 10/10 for assertiveness and expressiveness.

Physical Copy: Well, almost two weeks after the release date, I finally got my physical copy of MID. This is unprecedented, as I always received physical pre-orders the day of or even the day before release. The long wait drove me to buy the digital download, which I didn’t mind doing, but this could be very frustrating for those not willing to pay for the game twice. I was disappointed to find that the disc art is just a copy of the cover art (which is minimalist at best), and not a characteristic color like the other games. The box art seems like it was put together at the last minute, not unlike the cover art. If it weren’t for my compulsive need to own all of the physical copies, I probably would have skipped it. Physical copy gets a 1/10 for slow delivery and lackluster appearance.

Weird Things to Complain About: Yes, there is one background character whose voice sounds like it was recorded on a Motorola Razr, but she says one sentence that you don’t even have to listen to. Yes, some of the background characters are overt clones, but we’ve never even had background characters to complain about before. Should there have been more to do in the Hathorne House or other one-off locations? Yeah, probably, but we were given a ton of locales to visit. The characters were always bobbing around and breathing, but--surprise!--this is something that real humans do. Did their feet/hands occasionally meld with other objects or the environment? Sure, but why were you looking at their feet during a conversation? Admittedly, Teegan sometimes looked like she was trying to scare off a bear or prepare for flight, even I can’t argue that that wasn’t odd. But for the most part, these are minor, petty issues. There weren’t gaping plot holes, there was actually a mystery to solve (looking at you, MED), and we got a lot of the things that we asked for over the years. There is always room for improvement, and this game is certainly no exception. I expect that the next game will make refinements based on our feedback and be even better. HeR completely changed the Nancy Drew game formula, but they used our input as a guide. They’ll take what we say about MID into consideration with the next game, and hopefully over time we will see the same level of improvement we saw from SCK to SEA. They started from scratch, and even though they had five years to work on it, the first time you try something new is almost always the worst. I don’t condone the way they treated us over the hiatus or how they treated their own staff, but I don’t think it’s time to abandon ship yet. If you play this game with nostalgia goggles on and a closed mind, you’re going to hate it, you’re going to ask for a refund. If you go into it with an open mind and excitement for something new, you might just find that you like MID more than you’d care to admit. Weird things to complain about gets an 8/10 for minor oddities that should be expected in a pilot endeavor.

Conclusion: Change is inevitable. If you were around when TMB came out, you might remember the absolute uproar that came with the UI change. People threatened to walk away from the series because of the new menu screen and bulkier interface. If you’ve played the original SCK and STFD, then you know how drastically the games improved over the span of a single year. And compare those games to SEA and it’s clear that the games are always improving. But you have to start (or in this case, restart) somewhere, and MID is our new starting point. The games will get better, and we’ll still find things to complain about (like we always do), because there is always room for improvement. There’s no point in lamenting about how good the game would have looked on the old engine, because that misses the point. The old engine could not deliver what we as fans desired. It could not handle more than six characters or more than eight hours (this is being generous) of game play. It couldn’t give us more expansive environments or smoother navigation. The new engine gave us all of these things, but sacrificed a bit of graphics. Big whoop. I’m willing to bet that none of us got into the games for their graphics, especially those of use who became fans early on in the games’ history. Bottom line? HeR gave us a good game. Not their best game, maybe not even one of their better games, but it’s certainly better than MED or SCKR. And hey, at least we finally got the game. Midnight in Salem gets an 80%, an admirable B-, because the effort and progress is there, but there are definitely things that they could have done better.

[detectivecatsuitdrew]

New video up!

[itslockedcharmstrong]

I literally cannot believe that HER shared this review on their Facebook page instead of actually telling people who are waiting for physical copies when they’ll be shipping.

DoN’t bE sAd gUyS lmao

[bisexual-and-weak]

Ok ok. Memes and jokes aside, MID isn't that bad.

Disclaimer: I’m not actually playing the game. I’m watching people play it online because I’m broke.

The models look okay. The problem is the movement. You see characters like Teegan and Lauren Holt just moving their arms and making odd gestures every time you ask them something. Also whenever you move, at least for the first day, Deirdre is right behind you. Very closely behind you. She’s just really close to the camera.

The voice acting pretty good. Nancy’s voice sounds pretty good to me. It sounds nothing Lani Minella’s, but it grows on you. The dialogue seems off. I can’t explain it but it’s like... the characters are saying things that they probably wouldn’t say. I could be wrong though.

I haven’t seen a lot of puzzles, it’s mostly walking around, finding stuff and talking to people. Which I guess is the point.

After 5 years, should the game look better though? YES definitely.

That’s it that’s the post.

(I am not a video game critic. This is my personal opinion.)

[hourlywallstaring]

Why are we not starting at nancys desk?

Okay the movement is pretty janky

So deirdres arm is fucked up

Lip syncing is intresting

The fingers on this girl are horrific where are the nails

Hey! A koko kringle bar!

Wtf! NED WHAT THE FUCK.

These subtitles arent synced properly

I clicked on a tourist near the protestors and her line sounded like it was recorded on a cell phone in an echo bathroom wtf

The voice acting is mediocre at best lol

We can carve a pumpkin!

I think I found where an easter egg might be! Im so excited to try to get one w/o the forums

Why are the hardy boys hot? And flirty?

The fact we can't open nancys suitcase and see the hoarse t-shirt is disappointing

Joe... Ur lucky ur hot bc ... Jesus

I just can't get over these ugly ass leggings

The unreal shade being thrown at ned omg

Is the lawyer sleeping w Nancy's dad?

Oh god Jason pls stop ✋

I got stuck for hours bc of a stupid bug and had to uninstall the entire game. Joy.

Oh you ignore Ned but answer Frank huh?

Frank... Babey... Pls work on the flirting. Or just be less awks sweet summer child

Joe! NOT COOL! How many times you gonna call ur brother out like that?

Joe you are so lucky ur hot bc Jesus

That was a decent puzzel

Oh poor Joe hes so scared lol

They shouldn't have made Joe so much hotter than Frank thats just not right lol

I think I got all the pumpkins but im gonna keep one in my inventory just in case 🎃

I'm aware your not a boy Joe trust me 👀

This conversation should be happening with Ned not Carson. I'm disappointed. Why are they making ned and nancys relationship so bad?

It dosent make sense for it to be x person tho?

And ned finally calls back and he's jelly omg

Is ned going to be in the next game? (If there is a next game)

God im such a francy shipper

Deirde is SUUUCH a bitch fuck me

Hate this douch

His car is stupid clean thooo

Oh fuck me a maze? Really?

I love the hardy boys

Broke the fourth wall lmao

Okay I correctly guessed who did it but her motive isn't the best

Very shocked!

Dude there are options to completely fuck these ppls lives up WHAT

They just gonna have this v personal and intimate convo right in front of Nancy huh?

Music is great. V nice

This goodbye bullshit is awful omg this isn't a Nancy drew game

Also I hate the hand movements throughout the entire game

Okay that was alright.

Not the best Nancy drew game ever but definetly not the worst either. No sonny June so...

6/10

[concussions-and-clues]

Finished my first play through of MID and well I thought I’d write a bit of a review. No spoilers but I’ll put it below the cut just in case people are avoiding any talk of the game...

First thing I should remark on is the graphics. That has been the big hoo-haw lately and, yeah I get it. The official trailer accurately shows what the game looks like on normal graphic settings. However, I played it with the graphic settings turned up to high and while they weren’t up to the graphical standard of SEA or GTH they were decent. I found I got used to the graphics fairly quickly; however, the one thing I found myself unable to adapt to was the controls. 

They touted improved controls as a feature and given that HER’s giveaway includes a controller I thought we’d have the option to use a controller, I even had mine all plugged in and ready to go. However, when I started the game it was point and click only. Most people would say that this is a good thing except that it really feels like they got about two-thirds of the way through designing it for controller and then just gave up. There was one particular part where it felt like having the dual analog sticks would really help but with only the mouse it was a real chore. In a similar vein the movement controls feel very VR oriented, again like they got halfway through designing it for VR and just gave up. 

The story is pretty good although I felt it was a little bit thread bear. It is a very linear story too. For some people this isn’t an issue, but for some it is. I sit on the fence typically but even I was feeling I was a little too railroaded. The puzzles are something else that is a bit of a win and a bit of a loss. Generally they fall into the types of puzzles from the earlier games, where they are more realistic/ believable, which I feel is a good thing. On the flip side of that coin there are hardly any puzzles scattered throughout the game, with most of them being near the end of the game. The rest of the game is a lot of talking with people and, man do they have a lot to say... honestly it can feel like a “walking simulator” with the occasional puzzle. An enjoyable walking simulator but not quite the experience I was expecting from the previous Nancy Drew games I’ve played over the last 20 years (oh, man... am I really that old?!)

Okay enough negativity somethings I enjoyed about the game: -The Hardy’s are a lot of fun (not that I, as a primarily Hardy Boy’s based blog, am biased or anything, I say sarcastically) - The voice acting is pretty good. While it was disorienting at first to not have Lani Minella, I found myself getting used to the new lady fairly quickly - The game has added a lot of background colour to the reoccurring characters. I want to add more but feel it might spoil things, but suffice to say they definitely set up interesting issues for the (potential) future games - I did genuinely learn some stuff about the Salem witch trials. It wasn’t much but I did turn to my partner with a few facts that I learned today, annoying the heck out of them. - I know there are more but I think it might spoil some of the experience so I’ll hold back

The TL;DR is MID is... okay?? If you’ve only seen the graphics and the trailer I would say that it is much better than that but not as good as older Nancy Drew games.

6.75/ 10