Hotel Dusk: Room 215 review

Kyle Hyde used to be a New York cop before his partner turned traitor and went missing, presumed dead. That was three years ago. It's now 1979 and Hyde, having quit the force, works for Red Crown, ostensibly as a door-to-door salesman, but also in the business of finding things for his boss. Given Hyde's obsession with tracking down his former partner, this is a tidy little arrangement. Hyde now finds himself sent to a place called Hotel Dusk in the middle of nowhere; but things here are... unusual. Familiar faces spring up, strange coincidences emerge, and Hyde is convinced it will lead him to his former partner. It's an intriguing start to an intriguing game.This is essentially a character-driven adventure game and has to be savoured as such. You even hold the DS sideways, like a book, engrossed in the dialogue (text, no voices) of wonderfully animated hand-drawn characters. Rest assured, plot events get very interesting and retain that addictive "must-see-what-happens-next" appeal of a good page-turner.Of course, it's not a book - it's still a game, and very much follows standard videogame rules and conventions, often to the point of irritation. Broken into 'chapters' (read: levels), the climax of each sees Kyle confront another hotel guest and attempt reveal their secrets - but choose the wrong thing to say and it's "game over", and a choice of retrying that conversation (read: boss battle) or going back to the main menu. Outside of conversations, you can save your progress anywhere.All of this dialogue is a surprising change of pace for developer Cing, whose previous game, Another Code: Two Memories (known as Trace Memory outside Europe), depicted the lonely exploration of long-since abandoned rooms and had hardly any characters to interact with. It focused instead on puzzle-solving, testing your memory and ability to creatively use the functions of the DS. Hotel Dusk is a much longer game, but its puzzles are not up to the same standard. Some 'interactive' sections are just touch-screen functions for the sake of it and so easy as to be pointless. Although there are some good head-scratchers throughout, the most satisfyingly hefty puzzle isn't until the end of the game, by which time, the potential has already been wasted.Frustratingly, the poor sequencing of Trace Memory carries over to here as well; an item cannot be picked up until the character knows he needs to use it, and any event or conversation in the game is reliant on the one before it being triggered in the proper sequence. In Hotel Dusk, you can essentially be trapped frozen in timeless limbo until every nook and cranny necessary to further the plot has been explored. If a conversation topic hasn't been explored properly, Kyle will stop and tell you, making you go back to finish it off. Compared to many traditional point-and-click examples, this style of hand-holding comes across as rather amateur.The touchscreen gets put to excellent use in Kyle's notebook, however. You can keep three pages of memos to yourself - handwritten reminders, pictures or anything else you fancy. There can be lots of information to remember - especially if you want to uncover some of the more secret parts of the game - so keeping little notes in your book is good practice and fun to play around with.Moving around Hotel Dusk isan initially unwieldy affair involving two separate viewpoints: a top-down map on the touch screen and a first-person viewpoint on the other. The 3D is quite basic and walking up close to anything reveals a mess of pixels. This is such a shame when placed against the stunning character artwork. The black and white pencil sketch style is fantastic to see in motion - truly one of the most unique-looking games for any system, never mind a handheld.Interactive parts of the environment are shown by flashing icons; whenever you're standing next to a door, another character or an 'explorable' portion of the room, the relevant icon becomes active. The scene switches to a close-up view of the area you are looking at and virtually anything can be clicked on. Kyle Hyde has something (often sarcastic) to say about everything you see in the game. Tables, chairs, picture frames, furniture, tins of food - the amount of text in the game is vast and rarely repeats itself. Clicking on every little thing will quickly become something of an obsession.The characters all have their own unique personalities; even through text, they each come across recognisably different. Despite Kyle's cold exterior and straight-to-the-point philosophy on conversation, he's quite likable. Then there's the bossy but good-natured maid, the reformed crook bellboy, the grumpy owner, the bratty child, the well-spoken author, and so on, and it's all written with an affection for various colloquialisms. They all get their share of screen time and no-one feels left out. Importantly, Hotel Dusk has a sense of humour and doesn't feel too serious or po-faced (a few damn, piss and craps aside). Though it covers some darker themes, it's generally a lighthearted adventure.It could have been more atmospheric, though, and given its almost 'noir' graphical stylings, it's a little saddening to see it handled the way it has been. Though some of the music is quite evocative, ninety-percent of it sounds like something you'd hear in an elevator. Many of the tasks in the game are menial or side-tracked from what you want to be doing, and the characters often come across as stupid - too slow to catch onto obvious clues in the story.Regardless of this, Hotel Dusk is perhaps one of the most unique, stylish and absorbing games for the DS, and remains one of the best adventure titles for the system. Whether this says a lot about the game or rather the dearth of alternative adventure games is another matter; but given a chance Hotel Dusk will almost certainly keep you hooked to the end.