Before I get to the main point of the this blog, I want to assure those who are awaiting their physical copy of the new Nancy Drew game, Midnight in Salem, that the game is nowhere near as bad as people claim. In fact, the game isn't bad at all. The game does have problems with functionality, some of which will be mentioned presently. Even so, the game is enjoyable.
I wrote a post about the Nancy Drew fan meltdown of 2019, which was a negative reaction to CW Nancy Drew, but in truth, that was not the only meltdown this year. The Nancy Drew game fans have had at least two meltdowns in 2019. The most recent one was a week ago when Her Interactive published the game trailer on YouTube. The Nancy Drew game fans immediately were in an uproar since they felt that the graphics were inferior.
Fans were so upset about the trailer that I decided that I had to check out the game on the day it was released. Even though I had a physical copy on order from Her Interactive, I purchased a digital copy of the game on Steam. I also was curious about Steam, since I had heard a lot about the site.
On Tuesday, I registered on Steam and purchased the digital copy. My initial reaction to the game was disappointment. The game took forever to load, and the first room seen in the game is so ugly, in my opinion. The conversation lagged horribly, and I found the game impossible to enjoy.
I read many comments about the game and tried various suggestions to see if I could fix the issues. I was able to improve my playing experience, but some problems simply cannot be fixed unless one purchases a brand-new gaming computer. For most people, the game will have functionality issues, since most computers cannot handle the graphics.
The game does take forever to load on most systems. On my computer, the game takes 10 to 15 minutes to load. I am referring to the game after it has already been installed and played on the computer. It does actually take a solid 10 to 15 minutes to start up every single time.
To keep this issue from being annoying, initiate the startup, then go prepare your snacks. You are going to snack while you play the game, right? Once you are ready, then the game will probably have loaded up. As long as I find myself something to do while the game loads, it doesn't annoy me.
Once the game has loaded, it will be on the menu page. Before you play the game for the first time, go to the settings and make some changes. I want to emphasize this: Save yourself some grief and change the settings first. Unless you have a new gaming computer, you will need to change the settings. I wish I could go back in time and do that first. I hated the game on my first attempt to play. It was that bad.
Not all suggestions that I read about the settings helped my situation. The following settings are the ones that I used. I doubt that they are the best ones, but the game does play decently for me. Making these changes does cause the game not to look as nice. I personally prefer a less attractive game that can be played over a pretty game that crashes immediately.
My audio settings did not help. Some of the conversations are too low with the music too high, but I don't know that the settings can fix that problem.
The best piece of advice that I found online is to use the mouse to force the conversations along. The conversations are awful unless the player intervenes. The captions on the screen hang and don't match the sound. After a character finishes a statement, the screen hangs for 10 or more seconds. This was what really upset me. After I learned how and when to click on the captions, I was able to begin enjoying the game.
As a character speaks to Nancy, watch for when the character reaches near the end of the caption that is on display. As the character reaches the last one to three words of the statement, click on it with the left button of the mouse. Actually, I think you can click anywhere on the lower part of the screen, but I aim for the caption. If you time it right, then the sentences and captions will match up perfectly and flow quickly from one statement to the next. I mastered the timing pretty well once I figured out how this worked. I began enjoying the game once I solved the problem of the lagging conversations.
The characters do flail their arms around randomly in slow motion as the player forces the conversations along. The characters look pretty demented, but I ignored that. The dialogue is still fun, as always.
The navigation is very different in this game. I am about halfway through the game, and I am beginning to be able to navigate without much trouble. The navigation is counterintuitive to how I think, so I have really struggled with it.
Even though I have not finished the game, the story is good, and the player gets to do activities that are similar to the previous Nancy Drew games. The spirit of the Nancy Drew games franchise does live on in this game.
The beginning of the game is quite jarring and different. I liken it to reading a modern Nancy Drew book set in first person after having always read Nancy Drew books in third person. I felt the same way as I began playing this game. Once I adjusted and had played around 20% of the game, I truly felt like I was playing a Nancy Drew game for the first time in years. And it has been years.
I hope that Her Interactive will be able to publish more Nancy Drew games in the future. I always enjoy them.
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