Nancy Drew: The Final Scene for Windows

"Nancy Drew: The Final Scene" is the first Nancy Drew game I've had the pleasure to play. After reading so many positive reviews from Amazon.com customers and game magazines alike, I decided that I had to try it for myself. The main attraction of the game for me was the thought of exploring a (dilapidated) vaudeville theatre, a (virtual) pastime of mine.

"The Final Scene" bears many similarities to one of my all-time favourite games, 1994's "Are You Afraid Of The Dark: The Tale of Orpheo's Curse." Produced by now-extinct Viacom NewMedia, "The Tale of Orpheo's Curse" also took place in a condemned vaudeville theatre built in the early 1900s. Both "Orpheo's Curse" and "The Final Scene" draw heavily on magic tricks and lore. Both theatres are full of faded splendour and faded memories: black-and-white photos of visiting performers, elegant, now-tattered wallpaper, and secret passageways galore.

"The Final Scene" is gorgeous. Intricate attention to detail, such as spilled popcorn, the texture of a canvas backdrop, and plaster moldings in the lobby really capture the feel of the once-elegant (and fictious) Royal Palladium. Character models are realistic, with good lip-sync and facial expressions. Voice acting is above-average, and the music and sound effects really lend the game a spooky atmosphere: slow, sultry jazz trumpets, creepy organ music, ghostly laughter.

The game offers two levels of difficulty: Junior Detective and Senior Detective. The storyline is the same for both games, only the puzzles are harder as a Senior Detective. There is a nifty "Second Chance" feature that allows you to start over at the precise moment before you "died." And yes, there are a number of possible deaths facing Nancy if she doesn't solve the mystery or watch her step, including electrocution, a falling box, a falling spotlight, and most terrifying of all, a wrecking ball.

Detectives have to carefully gather clues and interrogate suspects. There are four in "The Final Scene" : Joseph Hughes, elderly caretaker of the theatre, Nicholas Falcone, activist with a criminal past, Simone Mueller, power-hungry agent, and Brady Armstrong, teenage heartthrob movie star. Nothing is as it seems, and everyone has some personal involvement in the Royal Palladium.

The game begins with Nancy and her friend Maya Nguyen, a student reporter, at the Royal Palladium for the premiere of Brady Armstrong's latest film, "Vanishing Destiny." An appropriate title as it turns out, for Maya vanishes from Brady's (empty) dressing room as Nancy stands outside, helpless.

There are plenty of delicious twists and turns, and like Fox Mulder from the X-Files, you must "trust no one." Nancy has three days to track down Maya and her kidnapper before the building is demolished. This includes snooping through personal belongings, making phone calls, and exploring hidden passageways. Nancy also gets to play with some fun equipment. There is plenty of humour, most of it sarcastic on Nancy's part. "What's the requests?" asks Nicholas Falcone, to which Nancy answers, "Don't you mean...what *are * the requests?" "What are you, my freshman English teacher?" he snaps back, then asks again, "What's the requests?"

The side characters are just as memorable, including a spunky 96-year-old Russian woman, Eustacia, with her cat food coupons, who tells Nancy to save her gratitude "for my funeral." There's also a librarian with an accent straight out of "Fargo," and a bored, Columbo-like detective. Nancy deals with magicians, including Houdini, and young detectives learn several magic tricks along the way.