Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS) Review
Japanese development team Cing, who brought us Another Code in 2005, impresses with another take in the point and click adventure genre. This time they take the risk by attempting to retell a dark detective story. If you enjoyed Another Code but wanted a longer more mature adventure, this could be the game you are looking for.
Hotel Dusk tells the story of Kyle Hyde, former New York policeman and his quest to find out what happened to his partner. Kyle follows a lead that indicates the at this rundown hotel, he could find all the answers he is looking for. In there he will meet a wide range of guests that will keep providing information about Kyle’s past, his partner and its relationship to the hotel. At first glance the guests don’t seem to have anything in common, but as the evening progresses, all the dark secrets come to light and the story unravels.
To play the game you hold the Nintendo DS as a book (like in Brain Age) using the touch screen to navigate through the hotel, solve different puzzles and to interact through the dialogue branches. But let me warn you, there isn’t much action in the game. Most of the time you will spend it reading and tapping the screen with your stylus to keep the conversation going. I thought the text speed was quite slow and a way to configure this feature would have been a nice touch. The puzzles in the game are usually pretty simple and involve using the touch screen and the microphone in ways we are used to. But Cing has done a superb job integrating the controls with the story in a way that it feels natural and not forced like we’ve seen in many other DS titles. The hardest task in the game is keep all the characters happy. If you choose the wrong question or push any of the guests too much to get the information you need, it could lead to “Game Over”.
The game is all about style and personality. You won’t find any similar game on a Nintendo console this year that will even resemble to Hotel Dusk. The game starts on the 29th of December of 1979, so the characters look and speak as if they were taken out from that decade. It is weird to think that this game was developed by a Japanese team, because the localization is so good (and probably done at the same time the Japanese version was developed) that you feel transported to the late seventies. The graphics are nicely done, having the left screen showing the hotel in 3D and the map on the touch screen. All the characters are portrayed in a pencil-drawn black and white style, similar to the A-Ha “Take on me” music video. All the characters have a very limited set of animations that will repeat throughout the different encounters and the different conversations. It would have been nice if more had been included to match more specific situations. The other detail that did hurt the overall presentation of the game, were the very pixelated representations of the characters in the 3D screen. They look very blurry and low def.
The music matches the game’s setting perfectly: it is very mellow, jazzy with a bit of “elevator music” flavor. Definitively not my kind of music, but I did enjoy it a lot. I won’t spoil it for you but, if you play through the game you will find a way to listen to the whole soundtrack. And this disguised “sound test” mode has been implemented in a very imaginative way.
The million dollar question with point and click adventures is how much replay value is there. Another Code was a 4 – 6 hours long game. In comparison, Hotel Dusk will take you between 20 – 24 hours to finish depending on your detective skills and how many times you are forced to re-start the game’s chapters. Once it is finished, you can play it again to try to make different decisions and unlock the second ending.
Hotel Dusk is definitively not a game for everybody. Those looking for fast paced, action packed adventure, are better off trying to find that somewhere else. But if you need a game to play while you commute, or are looking for a game that delivers a great story, charming characters and a different setting to what us gamers are used to, Hotel Dusk might be the 2007 sleeper hit that you need to try. It is always a great game to play as a break from something on your Wii.
