It's incredibly rewarding to see a game like Hotel Dusk: Room 215 get made in an age where bigger and better explosions seem to translate into bigger and better video game sales.
Not that we have anything against games with high body counts and lowbrow shenanigans, mind you -- still lovin' the whole Gears Of War experience on a regular basis. It's just that man can't live on the video game equivalent of action movies and Maxim magazine alone. Once in a while you want to read a good book.
Which is probably the best way to describe Hotel Dusk: Room 215. It's kind of a melding of old-school adventure games from the early '90s and an interactive detective novel, built around the Nintendo DS's touchscreen capabilities. You even play the game holding the DS sideways like a book, with the touchscreen as the right-hand "page."
The game's subject matter is even further away from what we normally associate with the medium: You play as Kyle Hyde, an ex-cop who quit his job three years earlier after he gunned down a partner who had betrayed the police force. But after shooting his traitorous partner, the man's body was tumbled into a river and never found. It's a mystery that haunts Kyle to this day.
Befitting a noir-ish and gritty mystery yarn set in 1979, the characters in Hotel Dusk are drawn and animated as sort of living sketches, reminiscent of the video for A-Ha's 1985 song Take On Me. (Whippersnappers: Remember the opening sequence of that episode of Family Guy where Chris gets pulled into the grocery store shelves? That was a spoof of the same video. You're welcome.)
The game's 10 chapters, broken down into an hour of in-game time apiece, have Kyle exploring every inch of the titular hotel, a shabby, two-storey building housing a cast of characters who share many interesting connections to each other and to Kyle's quest.
You'll talk to dozens of characters, examine hundreds of objects, solve interesting puzzles and take notes in your own handwriting, thanks to the DS's touchscreen.
Cool look, cool premise, cool departure from the video gaming norm... so why just a barely above-average score? As satisfyingly complex as Hotel Dusk's plot and characters are, the game moves at a pace that can be generously described as glacial.
Things do pick up a bit after you plow through the first couple of hours and start getting to know the other guests in the hotel, and the puzzles are almost always logical, even if they sometimes force you to go on a hotel-wide hunt for specific object to solve them.
But when a game requires you to spend as much time reading as Hotel Dusk does and then gives you only two options for text speed -- slow and a little less slow -- you might not have the patience to see it through. Being unable to have each block of text flash up at once instead of scrolling out at what the developers figured was a normal reading speed was quite nearly a dealbreaker for me. My thumb eventually got sore from furiously tapping on the D-pad, trying to get the text to scroll faster and make the next block of words appear.
If you can adapt to Hotel Dusk's slow, deliberate pace and stick with it long enough to get sucked into the genuinely interesting plot and characters, it offers a gaming experience unlike just about anything else out there. But getting to that point might be almost as challenging as unravelling this mysterious establishment's secrets.
BOTTOM LINE
Part adventure game and part mystery/detective novel, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is an interesting and unusual departure for the interactive entertainment medium. But it may prove just too slow and cumbersome for players accustomed to visceral thrills and instant gratification.
WHAM! Rating: |
7 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
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STEVE TILLEY'S CHEAT SHEET
Make conversation not war: Just because you're given the option of asking someone a particular question doesn't mean you necessarily should. Agitating certain people in the hotel will cause your game to abruptly end. Get a feel for their emotional state and think about how they might react to a particular line of questioning before you open your (virtual) mouth.
Unattended Luggage: If you're in danger of being searched, be sure to hide anything suspicious you might be carrying. Like, for example, a massive wad of cash that doesn't belong to you. Your suitcase might be a good place to stash stuff. Just don't forget it's there, because you'll need it later on.
Calling Mr. Spock: Unlike a lot of old-school adventure games, Hotel Dusk shies away from really obtuse puzzles, instead relying mostly on common sense and logic. For instance, late in the game you're confronted with a cassette tape that needs to be wound by hand. What common object would you use if you had to do this in the real world? Check your suitcase, the answer is "write" in front of you.
