I own every single Nancy Drew game and enjoy replaying them over and over. "The Shattered Medallion" is the most disappointing release to date.

It's not that "The Shattered Medallion" isn't enjoyable. It moves along quickly and the puzzles are pretty fun and easy (save for the last one). The reality show angle, though incredibly silly, does give a fun variety of competitive tasks. The graphics are beautiful and this time there's also lots of different types of places to explore (unlike recent games like "The Captive Curse," "Warnings at Waverly Academy," and "The Deadly Device").

But this 30th game will be only memorable for how bad it is. Here are 10 reasons why it fails:

1. I am a seasoned player of these games, yes, but I finished the game in the course of an afternoon. That's absurd. The puzzles are often face-palmingly easy--I even had to make up a word to describe how lazy they are... The reality show... Read more

As a long-time Nancy Drew game player (over a decade), I feel terrible writing this review. :( But the truth is, this game isn't great, it's not even good, in my opinion. It is my least favorite game, even below "Secrets Can Kill" (remastered and original). Like I always do for Nancy Drew games, I'm going to break the game down into different categories and rate those on a 1-10 scale.

PLOT: This is probably the most disappointing aspect of this game. There seriously is no plot, and you find this out quite quickly. The plotline is this: you're on a game show. You suspect Sonny Joon is up to something, but what?? There is absolutely no mystery, no suspense, and no action in this game. Everything felt like mini-game after mini-game, with no real plot development. The plot line also really resides on if you know who Sonny Joon is. If you haven't played most of the previous Nancy Drew games, you will be utterly lost. I just kept waiting for the plot to improve, but it didn't... Read more

I must add a disclaimer before my review, which is that by the time a game is released, the next game is already in the works. Therefore, it is possible that they were not yet able to incorporate or change the many disappointments that were seen in Silent Spy.

Per my review of SPY, I think the biggest downfall of their latest games is that the creators are trying far to hard to link Nancy's world to our world, when the reality is that players go to Nancy's world as an escape. Mystery, enchantment, and intrigue have been replaced with cell phones and flat/airheaded personalities. I was sorely disappointed by how annoying it was that Nancy's phone kept ringing, and Bess' personality has truly gone from someone bubbly and confident to a complete dimwit. I also, as I've stated before, don't like that they are linking Nancy's close friends and cohorts so closely to the game as those are precious characters that should be left to our imagination.

The music and... Read more