We've all heard the old saying that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover - and that's just as true of videogames, too. After finally replacing my old dinosaur of a PC with something a bit more modern, I decided to delve back into a favorite genre of mine - adventure games - and I took on a couple of titles for review, including The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft and Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy. I was expecting that The Hardy Boys wouldn't be too bad but I wasn't looking forward to Nancy Drew, assuming that it'd be a game aimed at teenage girls and not the type of thing that would appeal to me. Then that rarest of rarities occurred: I discovered that I couldn't have been more wrong! The Hardy Boys turned out to be an abysmal load of nonsense, while Nancy Drew was so engaging and compelling that I found myself sitting at my PC for hours on end, musing over its tricky puzzles and drawn into its intriguing storyline.

Castle Malloy is just one entry in a long-running series of Nancy Drew mysteries - and because of this, the developers have really got the game mechanics down to a fine art. Sure, it's a by-the-numbers adventure game and so there's nothing new or groundbreaking in here, but every element is well designed and skillfully implemented, making for a good few hours' worth of quality entertainment. The storyline for Nancy's latest escapade sees her traveling to Ireland to be maid of honor for her friend Kyler. However, upon arriving at the isolated, half-ruined castle where the wedding is to take place, Nancy crashes her car when a frightening apparition screeches across her windshield. Making your way through the dark, spooky grounds to the castle's front door, a cranky old Irishman refuses you entry, and after throwing a few stones at Kyler's window to attract her attention, you finally get inside. However, it seems that the apparition was a foreboding portent, as Kyler's fiancé, Matt, has vanished. Kyler is convinced that Matt is playing some silly practical joke, and claims to have heard his voice, muffled in the distance, since his disappearance - but Matt's best friend, Kit, thinks that Matt has bailed out of the marriage, while the old Irish caretaker, Mr. Delany, is certain that the fairy folk have spirited Matt away! Your job is simple; to unravel the mystery and discover, one way or another, what has really happened to Kyler's fiancé.

The story sounds a little simplistic and not something that could hold your attention, but it's well written and there's far more to the mystery than initially meets the eye. Better yet, like all good mystery stories, you gradually uncover more and more information that gives each of the suspects - including Kyler - potential motivation for wanting Matt out of the picture. You also you find books and documents that begin to illuminate the history of the castle, which don't appear relevant at first, but everything falls nicely into place at the game's conclusion, when all the clues finally make sense and you uncover the mystery behind the freaky 'banshee' that seems to be haunting Castle Malloy. The pieces of information you gather all come together in a way that's very satisfying, giving you enough clues to being to form a picture and a hypothesis for what might really be going on.

The dialogue is well written and well acted, too; while the accents are perhaps a little cliché, and more of an American interpretation of what English and Irish accents sound like, each of the main characters is firmly established and you soon get to know them, as well as being taken on a journey that changes your perceptions of what each character is really all about as the adventure progresses. The actress who plays Nancy is particularly good and the supporting cast who you speak to on the telephone, including your dad, you boyfriend and two best friends, are also memorable - it's fun to call them up to discuss the case and see if they can give you any ideas as to how you should proceed. The questions you can ask the key characters are intelligent as well; a series of logical and appropriate questions are available each time you uncover new information and go back to interview a character again, causing Nancy Drew to come across as an astute, capable and intelligent young woman - the ideal teenage detective.

Probably the area in which the game is least impressive is its visuals; the characters are slightly cartoonish caricatures, while the scenery out in the castle grounds, where you view the environment from a birds-eye overhead angle and guide Nancy by holding down the left mouse button and moving the cursor, is pretty basic. This serves to slightly pull you out of the game's sense of reality, but it's not really a big deal because most of the game is viewed from first person perspective, and each room in the castle and scene in the grounds is well rendered and atmospheric. The castle itself features a number of rooms with suites of armor, log fires, a dilapidated nursery and a library, while the grounds feature some picturesque, rural scenes set against the starry night sky. The graphics aren't cutting edge but they're of a high enough quality to immerse you into the game world, accompanied by some pleasant background music that's suitably quaint and fits the setting well.

The best aspect of the game however is the most important one; the puzzles you encounter on your adventure. In between questioning the principle characters and piecing clues together, you encounter a series of increasingly tricky puzzles that are usually challenging and satisfying to solve. You're broken in gently by one of those puzzles where you have a stack of weights, which you must move from one pole to another, via a middle pole, but you cannot place the larger weights on top of the smaller ones. Solving this puzzle rewards you with a lantern that allows you to explore the grounds fully, revealing a number of other locations and new puzzles. Another puzzle involves a dollhouse with some funny looking cloth dolls and a series of puzzles where you must place the dolls in a unique configuration that satisfies a set of conditions. For example, the pig doll must be to the right of a suit of armor and the cow doll must be directly below a chandelier, the female doll must be next to the male doll, and so on.

Other puzzles include a set of scales that you must balance with little weights of various substances that are assigned a certain value, and a tricky cog puzzle where you must fit all the cogs into the correct configuration to get a mechanism to function (once you've obtained the missing cogs - not all the puzzles can be completed until you've found the items you need). There's also a very tricky tile puzzle where you must move and rotate tiles to match up all the colored weasels; that one took me over an hour to solve and is quite nightmarish! Then there's the old style printing press that you must first use to print out wedding invitations and later use in a complex puzzle to print out instructions for operating a device that grants you access to new areas of the castle grounds, as well as the wedding seating plan, which needs organizing in a way that satisfies everyone's requests (certain people want to be seated next to others, on a corner, and so on).

The earlier puzzles are quite challenging and they become particularly fiendish later on, such as the puzzle where you must match up symbols on stones with star constellations, and another where you have to decipher the clues left in a series of books to uncover the letter combination that unlocks a writing desk. There are also puzzles that use science and technology at the end of the game, which are again particularly difficult; I had to resort to a walkthrough at a couple of points and although the game is supposed to be suitable for children aged ten and up, it in no way patronizes its target audience. In fact, I doubt that many children will manage to get through this without becoming completely stuck and needing help, although at least in Junior Sleuth mode some of the puzzles are a little easier.

This is one of the best things about this game; adults can go for the full-on adventure while the Junior Detective mode features easier versions of the puzzles and a very handy Task List. Clear entries appear on this list for every task you receive and you simply tick them off when you think you've completed them, meaning that in Junior mode you're rarely at a loss as to what you should be doing, even if you still might struggle to figure out how to actually do it. It's easy to miss points of interest in the grounds too; I didn't find a section of the wall that you need to investigate and consequently it took me a while to figure out what I was missing for the puzzle I was presented with at some gravestones that I discovered. This can be frustrating but for the most part it's not a big problem and doesn't happen too often. Probably the most annoying aspect of the game is the 'good news, bad news' screen when you die - you're put right back into the game without having to redo anything on those occasions when you croak, but in the sequence in the swamp where one wrong turn results in you sinking without a trace, it's very tedious to have to keep reading these annoying screens that are trying to be funny but just don't succeed.

The game interface itself is simple and intuitive; you simply move the cursor around the screen and it changes into a magnifying glass when you can zoom in on something, such as a bookcase, for a closer look, or a hand for an object that you can pick up and either take or interact with, while an arrow indicates that you can move to another screen or view, making navigation around the castle and other locations very easy. The Task List is clear and the inventory is simple to use, although it has an annoying quirk of not putting things back in the same place after you click to examine them; because as a lot of the items you pick up are documents represented by small icons, you find yourself clicking through them to try to find the one you're looking for and becoming confused as their order changes. You also have a Journal that could have benefited from not being fitted into such a small sub-screen but it lists your observations, clues and suspects and is useful to read through.

There are a few mini-games to enjoy too, which are good fun for the most part. The primary one is for mixing drinks in the local inn, where you leaf through a recipe book and then click on the juice icons, put the mixture through the blender if necessary, choose the correct glass, add ice and fruit when requested, and place the finished drinks on trays. The 'music' mini-game is a bit useless though, where symbols scroll across the screen and you press the corresponding keys to play the drums, but with no attempt by the developers to match them up to the rhythm of the music. You can earn tokens at the inn to play the darts mini-game, which is challenging due to your shaky hand, and a spot the difference game with a large range of pictures against a fairly tight time limit. Each of these games gives you a needed item the first time you win them and after that you just earn more tokens that can be given to the Fortune Teller machine in the castle; again, the first time you use this you get a needed item, after that you just get random fortunes. There are hidden Easter Eggs to find too, and you also get stars at the end of the game for achieving certain things, such as shearing sheep to create a range of bizarre makeovers! There's a bit of replay value here, although there's little reason to come back once you've solved the mystery.

Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy is an enjoyable adventure game in the classic mold. It does nothing new but with an engaging story, well acted and intelligent dialogue, immersing graphics and a range of enjoyable and challenging puzzles, it's a worthwhile pursuit for any adventure game enthusiast, as well as a good introduction to the genre for older children and adults alike. Just don't make the mistake of underestimating this game or assuming that it's for kids; unless you're nothing short of a genius, you're going to encounter plenty of head-scratching moments along the way!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).