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.

This morning I got to BestBuy around 7:30am, to wait with Leilani for the store to open for Wii getting. We didn’t see anyone standing outside… and, figuring from asking BestBuy employees that people usually start lining up around 7, and it being after Christmas, we should be able to score a couple of Wiis (one for me, and one for Harley).

We didn’t see anybody outside because the line-up was in the underground, indoor, parking lot. Getting inside there around 8am we managed to spot some thirty people accompanied by two BestBuy employees handing out vouchers to the first people in line. Only the first five people in line actually got one, though.

Because BestBuy had only five Wiis. What a pathetic shipment quantity!

And how early did people start waiting in line? Well, 8pm – 11pm last night.

That means the five Wiis that BestBuy had were essentially sold out some 10 hours before the store even opened.

I think I’m just going to wait until March when they become readily available.

My favourite part of the whole ordeal:

• BestBuy Employee “Uhm … we don’t have anymore Wiis, but we have five PS3s. Does anyone want a PS3?”
• Crowd of about 30 people: silence
• One guy that was pissed off about not getting a Wii and didn’t want to leave empty handed: “Sure whatever.”

I think shortages of the Wii are actually driving up sales of the PS3. The word “pwned” comes to mind.

DJ/Mixer Touchboy started things off with an upbeat electronic blend of Gameboy sounds and techno beats. It was some pretty good stuff, though doesn’t make for much of a visual show. That’s where Harley and I realized that it’s great music to listen to while playing video games, and started playing some competitive Tetris DS.

The next band was Freezepop, which I instantly fell in love with. The music is entirely uncharacteristic for me: electro/synth pop that sounds like Depeche Mode crossed with a Gameboy. Their music is recorded almost entirely on a Yamaha QY70, a curious portable device that itself resembles a Gameboy. The music has this 8-bit, cheesy, bubblegum-pop meets femme-bot quality to it. It’s addictive, simple but not overly simplistic, and fun. After the set I rushed to buy both full length albums, Fancy Ultra-Fresh and Freezepop Forever along with a T-shirt – and got a free EP and poster, too.

Freezepop has been in a few Playstation games, including both Guitar Hero games with the songs Get Ready 2 Rokk and Less Talk More Rokk – so it’s entirely possible that you’ve heard them before. According to the official website, they’re “Hip enough for hipsters but nerdy enough for nerds.”

Finally the Minibosses took the stage, playing music from tons of NES classics like Mario 2 (aka Doki Doki Panic), Castlevania, Metroid, Mike Tyson’s Punchout and Contra, among others. What was most surprising about the Minibosses was the mosh pit that opened up … It’s Contra, not Slayer! It was a violent mosh pit, but it was pretty damn big for a place like Club Soda. I’ve seen smaller mosh pits at death metal shows.

The entire concert, and the Arcadia Festival in general, was infused with love for Nintendo. It’s as if all the people that grew up with Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and The Wizard came out of their hiding places showing off the impact that Nintendo has had on them. Most people were wearing t-shirts with Mario or Zelda references and – this the best part – whenever a slow song was being played, instead of holding up lighters, people set the brightness level on their DS Lites all the way up and waved them around.

Nerdy? Hells yes. But it’s also awesome.

The largest concentration of people at Arcadia weren’t even in the Nintendo booth – they were in line for the Nintendo booth. Indeed, I didn’t even bother to stop anywhere else. The nice thing about a line-up of Nintendo enthusiasts is, of course, the fact that a lot of people were carrying Nintendo DS systems. We managed to bide our time playing a massive multiplayer game of MarioKart while waiting – for about 3 hours. Nintendo was kind enough to set up some of their DS Stations so that a console was facing the lineup, so people without DS’s could entertain themselves. There were also animators blowing horns and chucking t-shirts and belts into the line up, making sure everyone was properly hyped and enthused.

When I finally got inside the Nintendo booth, I lined up for Excite Truck, quickly gave up (4 minutes a race multiplied by 10 people in front me …) and went to line up for WarioWare: Smooth Moves, a series of micro-games about three seconds long, each completely wacky and each requiring a different way of holding the Wiimote. It was ridiculously fun, as you would expect from WarioWare (which blew me away at the previous Arcadia on GameCube).

The only other game I managed to play was Wii Sports. I played boxing (and accidentally punched my opponent in the head for real … ) and a 4-player game of tennis. It’s just as much fun as it looks. The controls are so simple and intuitive … You box just like you would expect, and you play tennis just like you would expect. It’s so … natural.

Was Arcadia worth the $10 ticket price, even though I spent about 5 hours in line and only 1 hour actually playing any games? Hell yes. I’m waking up uber-early / not going to bed in order to get a Wii next Sunday.

The best part of the night was, by far, the impromptu “DS Circle”. I had my Nintendo DS with me, Harley had his, and after a couple of head-to-head matches of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan we were noticed by some other DS owners. Within minutes there were six of us, sitting in a circle, playing a multiplayer game of MarioKart DS. I think we actually spent the majority of the party playing with our DS’s, with the group’s numbers fluctuating as people left to play actual vintage games and then returning for more multiplayer gaming.

One of the most brilliant things about the Nintendo DS is that most games have single-cartridge multiplayer. Meaning only one person actually has to own the game for an entire group to play it. This was no accident – it’s precisely this feature that lets groups of would-be strangers start socializing and gaming with each other. (It’s also a great way to try out games that you might consider buying).

It was so much fun that we exchanged e-mail addresses and started up a group, the Concordia Nintendo DS Club, so that we could get together again – hopefully on a regular (weekly?) basis – and play some more games together. It’s amazing how the Nintendo DS can be such a powerful social tool. It’s no surprise that it renewed my faith in video games.

I had so much fun playing that I must have looked deranged, with a huge stupid grin on my face, as I launched red shells at Shy Guys and mushroom-boosted my way to victory! (Actually I think was in second place after all that MarioKarting).

We finished off the night with a four-way match of Bust-A-Move.

So if you have a Nintendo DS, and you’d like to meet up with a group of people to some multiplayer games on a (hopefully) regular basis, make sure to sign up to the group.