Customer Reviews

The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

When I bought this game I was so excited. Like many Nancy Drew fans I thought this game would be an extension of the Herinteractive games that I have come to enjoy and love. This could not be further from the truth. I found the game to be very cumbersome. It is very difficult to move the players and the graphics were primitive. I found the dialogue between the boys to be annoying and distracting. The Adventure company is going to have to make a lot of improvements before I will buy another Hardy Boys game again. I think I will stick with Nancy Drew.

From the comic book intro to the character renderings to starting out the game having to sneak out of the house.. so disappointing.

As a fan of the Nancy drew games by Her Interactive, I was looking forward to the release of a Hardy Boys game. On playing it, I must say I became much more appreciative of the way the Nancy Drew games are set up. By never really seeing the main characters, it allows the players to retain some imagination and also to really feel like they are stepping into the shoes of the character.

Also, the Hardy boys game lost the ability to appeal to adults who might have been fans of the novels in their youth.. or even ones simply looking for a new adventure/mystery game.. by starting out the game by having the characters get in trouble with their mom.

If this continues as a series, I hope the next one will do more justice in adding to the saga of the Hardy Boys.

I have been a Hardy Boys collector and fan for almost 40 years. I have seen the characters change with the times, and have been increasingly disappointed with those changes. This game, though, takes the cake... After playing (and game testing) several of the Nancy Drew games by Herinteractive, I was hoping that the Hardy Boys would be equally as enjoying. What a letdown! Jowood sure dropped the ball on this one. I wonder if any of the staff there has even read one of the Hardy Boys books. They probably think the Hardy Boys have always worked for ATAC. By the way, in case anyone from Jowood is reading this, if you do another game, drop the ATAC scenario. Just because the recent books have Frank and Joe working for ATAC doesn't mean you have to. The ATAC theme just doesn't cut it. The publishers created ATAC as a means of giving the Hardy Boys a reason to get involved in mysteries, because they thought the idea of the boys "accidently" stumbling into a case time and time again was unrealistic and rediculous. Yep... now it's..... LOTS better....not! If this were a real life situation, Fenton Hardy would probably be in prison for endangering the lives of minors. CPS would probably place the boys in a foster home, because their parents would be seen as unfit. As for the game characters of Frank and Joe, the current actors should go back to I-Carly and Hanna Montana, respectively. I mean, in the game, Joe looks a total pot-head, and Frank looks like he's about fourteen years old. As for the other characters, the character of their mother was just so rude and obnoxious to the point that I thought she was Aunt Gertrude at first. Oops! I mean "Truuuudy." My suggestion, Jowood---Buy one of the Nancy Drew games and STUDY it closely. Or better yet, just let Herinteractive do future games.

Robert M Nelson

Good things:
- An interesting mystery with lots of twists.
- Fun puzzles.
- Different locations to visit and a variety of characters to interact with.

Bad things:
- The graphics are VERY dated. We're talking at least five years old - and even then, they wouldn't have been good. Think the early Nancy Drew games.
- The game engine is bad. Solving the puzzles was often easier than figuring out how to exit a room. Seeing poor Joe Hardy shuffling clumsily after his brother for the whole game was painful.
- Everything that you can click on is something you need. You can click on nothing else. This gives the game a closed off feeling. It makes knowing where to go and what to do easier, though.
- The whole thing with the Hardy Boys being agents for ATAC is just stupid. I'm not familiar with the Hardy Boys the way I am with Nancy Drew, but apparently they work with an agency called ATAC which is some kind of junior FBI for high school students. It's idiotic. Yeah, whenever I lose $200 million in bearer bonds, I immediately think, "Quick! Bring in the 11th graders!"
- The comic book scenes bookending the mystery are poorly done and extremely cheap-looking.
- This game is short - about the same as the Nancy Drew games.

Overall: I really did have fun playing this mystery, in spite of all the problems mentioned. It had some very fun puzzles, and wasn't so difficult that I had to play with a walkthrough in my hand the whole time. An interesting storyline, also. However, it's surprising that The Adventure Company put so little effort into a game that could be the start of a successful franchise. I wouldn't be surprised if the downside was enough to scare plenty of consumers away from this title in the future.

I had lots of drama trying to get this game to work. I am including a copy of that post after my review.
As for the game, it was not bad. Not really worth everything I had to do to get it to work, but it was one of the better games I have played from The Adventure Company. I don't like the interface. It is hard to move around but I got use to it. I much prefer the Nancy Drew games. There were a few innuendos that I noticed, which kind took me by surprise, but I don't think kids would get any of them. Graphics are fine. I did have the game shut down on me once, but may have been my computer. Couple of gliches, but nothing major. Over all, (once the game was playable), I did have fun and it kept me guessing. I might consider getting the next one. Hopefully the company will test the game and make sure it is working BEFORE they release it. I do have to say, they were very helpful and very nice about fixing the problem.

First Review:
I just received this and the game is not working. The game starts, and I can click on everything on the main menu, except for New Game. When I do, it crashes and gives an error message. Tech Support, at this time, has not been established yet, so I went to the fourms. They have a board for tech questions and lots of people are having this problem. The companys answer to this is that we don't have the right video card. Here is the note taken from the site:

NOTE: If the Name or Manufacturer lists SiS, S3, Intel, or Via, your computer has an integrated graphics controller which is not sufficient to run the game. In addition, the Approx. Total Memory must be 64 MB or greater.

But the system requirments that are listed say nothing about this :

Windows®: 2000/XP/Vista(tm)
CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium® 3
RAM: 256 MB
CD/DVD-ROM: 16x
Video Card: 64 MB DirectX® 9 Compatible
Sound: 16-bit DirectX® Compatible
Disk Space: 2.3 GB Available
Input: Mouse, Keyboard and Speakers

I am waiting for a response from the makers.

UPDATE:

They are currently working on a patch to fix this problem, which they say we should have tomorrow. I will update again if it works and what I think of the game.

2ND UPDATE:
They released the patch and it seems to work. I am having another problem with the game. The cursor is off about an inch. It makes it very difficult to play. They are checking into it. I have not seen anyone else who has had this problem with the mouse. What little I was able to play, it is nothing like moving around like Nancy Drew, for all of you Drew fans. Difficult and annoying, but maybe that had to do with my new problem. I will update again if this problem gets fixed.


UPDATE:AGAIN: They were able to send me a second patch which fixed my new issue. Now I get to play and let you know what I think of the game.

I was very disappointed in this game. I did not enjoy the structure of it or the way it played. I was expecting it to be like the Nancy Drew games and it is no where near the level of those games. I will not buy one of these games again. If you are a fan of the Nancy Drew games, you will be disappointed by this game.

Even with all the poor reviews, I decided to play this game and find out for myself if this really is that bad of a game, since being a die hard Nancy Drew fan and a fan of all Adventure games, if your one of those then you know what I mean. So...here I am...I just finished playing this game, and I had to resort to a hint website and a walk though for parts of the game. I knew what needed to be done, but could not figure out how to get it done with the VERY poor interface and the controls. They made what could have been a good fun game into a teadious and frustrating event. I even read the manual and was still having some issues understanding the controls and what they wanted me to do. So I have to agree with alot of the other reviews on this game. They are correct in many ways, but some of us just have to find out for ourselves don't we. If you must play this game, wait till it comes down in price or hits the bargin bin. I'll probably buy the next one (if there is a next one) just to see if they learned from their mistakes, and can make a better more fun game.

bought game, was really excited. received 9/27 and could not play for 2 weeks while they tried to come up with a patch to fix there game. Patch worked for first 5 minutes then quit. had to wait for another patch. that one didn't work. support was UNHELPFUL and wouldn't answer e-mails for days. now I can't return it to Amazon because 30 days is over and its open and would have to try to prove defective. Company knows its defective and will not give me a refund. Several others are also having the same problem and have reported it on the forum. I DO NOT recommend this game. VERY FRUSTRATING. Out $20. VERY MAD. (from 17 yr. old daughter)

REVIEW: Very disappointing...The ending was entirely corny. There were too many sketched comic book scenes that made this game seem less of an actual adventure game and more like a cartoon. Parts of it were fun (looking for stuff) and the graphics were fairly nice. The dialogues were sometimes mundane. Being a big fan of the Nancy Drew game series (I have all of them), The Hardy Boys game was much like ND's Game #1, not quite "there" and let's hope the next game comes out with some quality, if there IS another one in the works.

TECHNICAL: I had no problems with running the game, and did not need the video patch. Am running XP SP2. The voices had problems though, fading in places, as if they cut out the original dialogue and did a voice-over at the wrong sound level. I found myself having to adjust the volume quite a bit, both up and down.

Many ways they can improve. Graphics are great but the story line was a little lame. Felt lost and clueless quite often. I keep in mind that the first Nancy Drew game was quite lame as well. And look how GREAT they are now. There is hope for the Hardy Boys. I would suggest playing just so you can get use to the tools and game format.