Freelance Review - Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for Nintendo DS
Today's Freelance Review comes to us from BFeld13.
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Overview
Hotel Dusk: Room 215's story is that of a gritty noir novel, with a hard-boiled ex-cop, missing paintings and amnesia. You play Kyle Hyde. He's searching for his double-crossing ex-partner in the NYPD and has stopped for the night at Hotel Dusk in the southwestern desert. By the end of the night, Hyde will discover what happened at Hotel Dusk. You do this by helping out the guests at the hotel, all of whom are somehow linked to Hyde.
Funness:
The controls are simple. Everything is controlled with the stylus. Place the stylus on where you want to go on the map and Hyde will walk there. Zoom in on places of interest to solve puzzles, rinse, and repeat. Conversations consist of reading and choosing one of two or three options, most of which lead in the same direction. You can jot things down in your notebook as well. It's simple and easy to pick up.
The game is not without its flaws, however. The dialog pacing is slow. Really slow. Some conversations take up to 20 minutes to complete. It's engaging, but ultimately a burden as well. The dialog is also completely on rails. Conversations never have branching paths, one of the game's largest flaws. The experience could have been much deeper and had more longevity had the story had multiple outcomes. Additionally, I would have appreciated a reminder of what to do next when turning the game back on, but that's a small detail.
The puzzles, on the other hand, are nothing short of genius. I found myself constantly amazed at how the DS was used in varying ways. The developers obviously put a lot of time into crafting these interludes and I hope it will encourage more developers to think outside the box.
Shininess:
Graphically, the game looks fine. The environments are rendered in crude 3D on the top screen and an overview map is placed on the touch screen, allowing for easy navigation. The comic book style animations and illustrations do a good job of conveying the retro feel of time period in which the game is set.
The music is good, but nothing special. It sounds like hotel lobby music. Occasionally, when the dialog gets tense, the music will pick up. If you really like something, you can access a jukebox in the game to listen to the music over and over.
Worthiness:
Overall, I really enjoyed Hotel Dusk: Room 215. It had an engaging storyline and awesome use of the DS's functionality. I probably wouldn't play through it again, but I clocked in at over 21 hours by the time I checked out. Be sure to pick this one up if you're a big fan of DS games which stray from the beaten path and use the system in ways it's never been used before.
Score: 4/5 Grab it!
What say you?!