Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Posted by Skrud at Thursday, February 22nd 2007 at 10:23pm
While I was in New York last weekend (and an awesome trip it was) I picked up a Nintendo DS game called Hotel Dusk: Room 215, since it’s in high demand and Amazon was sold out. The game is an interactive mystery novel, and plays like film noir.
You play Kyle Hyde, an ex-NYPD cop who’s now a door-to-door salesman in LA. Three years ago he shot his partner, Bradley, who turned out to be a dirty cop. Bradley’s body went missing and Kyle’s been looking for him ever since, wanting to find out why Bradley betrayed the force. Kyle’s company sometimes takes on unusual offers to look for certain things, and Kyle will execute these missions. The latest mission brings you to Hotel Dusk, which is riddled with mystery, and some clues about Bradley…
Adventure games are built entirely around atmosphere, and the best part about Hotel Dusk is the atmosphere it creates. The characters have … character, and there’s emotion pouring out from them. The art style is sombre and subtle, but serious and dramatic. You can see smiles and slight grins, frowns and furrowed brows. I think the line drawings emote better than fully-rendered 3D characters would. The music is mostly piano, and soft jazz – which fits perfectly with the film noir setting – and accents the mood of the events in the game. It’s really easy to lose yourself in the game world for hours on end.
The story itself was intriguing, and filled with twists and turns as you discover the secrets of the hotel’s guests. Although it was pretty predictable, I still had fun unravelling the mysteries. The only issue I have with the game’s story is that it’s very linear – that is, there’s only one story and only one way to go through the game (with incorrect paths leading to a Game Over screen). This effectively reduces replay value to 0.
Hotel Dusk makes very clever use of the DS’s dual screens and touch pad. You hold the console sideways, as if you’re holding a book. You use the touch screen to navigate and inspect objects. When you have a conversation with another character, Kyle will appear on the left screen while the character you’re talking to will be on the right screen. This makes the conversations flow dynamically, and the facial expressions are excellent and accentuate the text. This game does some pretty clever things with the DS altogether, but I won’t mention any more because I don’t want to give you any spoilers.
If you want to see more, you should really check out this video review. And then go pick up the game.
