Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (Nintendo DS) Reader Review

The first thing you notice when you start to play Hotel Dusk is that the Nintendo logo comes up sideways. The initial confusion lasts as long as it takes you to realise that for the game requires you to hold the DS sideways, like a book. Of course if you'd read the instructions beforehand this would have been obvious- but who does that any more?

The game is a point-and-click adventure, that, as the title suggests, takes place in a hotel. You control Kyle Hyde, an ex-police officer who's tracking down a colleague who betrayed him. (He's also rather good looking, but that's not relevant to anything)

The main bulk of the game is split into 3 different goals: solving puzzles, finding clues dotted around the hotel and sweet talking people into giving you information. All 3 are vital to progressing through the game, and the games shuffles your tasks between them all nicely so that you're never left doing one for too long.

The puzzles are generally relatively simple, but they're also clever enough for them not to be discounted as too easy. Puzzles can be repeated as often as required, which is good if you're stuck and need a break or just can't quite get it right.

Finding clues is another important aspect, and one that often helps with a puzzle at hand. For example, there may be a number combination you have enter to progress in the game, but have no idea what the combination is. Simply by looking around you'll more often then not find a vital clue inside a draw or poking out from underneath something. Occasionally it can be frustrating when you can't find something important, but usually you'll find it's been staring you right in the face the whole time!

Perhaps the most crucial goal for developing the storyline is your ability to charm people into giving you information. Typically you engage in a text based conversation, and you choose what to want Kyle to say or ask to the other person. Choosing wisely may reveal a mini-revelation, but choosing wrong will only annoy the person. In extreme circumstances you may reveal that you know something you shouldn't, and this can lead to a rather harsh instant game over.

Choosing what to say is a very delicate process that relies on gut feeling more then anything. Sometimes you need to tippy-toe around the issue, whereas other times a more aggressive approach is appropriate to get the information you need. Sometimes it best to lie, and other times you need to play it straight. This adds a new dimension to the conversations and keeps you on your toes constantly. Luckily you can save the game at any time, and it is advisable to do so regularly. There is no health bar and often no warning that you've made a mistake until it's too late and you've been chucked out of the hotel.

The game world is viewed on 2 screens. In general the touch screen shows a 2D view of your location in the hotel, and its with the touch screen that Kyle is controlled, whilst the other screen shows what it looks like in 3D. However the viewpoint changes when you are looking for something or talking to someone.

Graphically the game navigation aspect is mediocre. The 2D view on the touch screen is basic at best and the 3D isn't amazing either- but it does the job of moving you around the hotel and that's enough. Luckily the graphics do come alive when you engage in conversations with people. The characters look like they've been drawn from pencil and they show real emotion when reacting to the storyline as it develops. Perhaps it's not impressive in terms a number-crunching number of pixels/polygons, but it does have a charm to it and it just plain works.

The game also sounds good. Normally the music is quite mellow, but it quickly tenses up quickly at appropriate times. The sound is generally used as an extra tool to assess the personality of a character or the atmosphere of a situation. For example, approaching the climax of the game you descend into the basement of the hotel, not knowing what you're going to find. The music stops and all you can hear are your own footsteps echoing against the walls. It's as creepy as hell and wouldn't be out of place in a horror game.*

Once you get past the initial slow start the game really grabs you and won't let you go. It'll also take you a good couple of weeks to complete, providing you're not playing it constantly. However, you definitely can't play it for a few minutes every other week- to enjoy it you need to sink your teeth into it, which possibly makes the game seem shorter than it actually is.

Perhaps its main weakness is that there's no bonus modes or mini-games, just the main course. This means that once it's completed there may be little desire to reply the game- at least not until you've forgotten the storyline at least.

Overall it's solid game, especially for those that don't mind a bit of text to read or a mystery to solve. It almost scrapes a 9, but I'm going to be reasonably harsh in my scoring and give it a well deserved 8.

*As it turns out there aren't any flesh eating zombies in the hotel.