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Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Published By: Tristan Clark On: 06/02/2007 10:00

AT A GLANCE

"It's looking like an essential purchase for story-loving DS owners."

The Good: Totally unique graphical style; compelling story.

The Bad: May not move fast enough for some.

The Ugly: Flashbacks to the 80s whenever I see those characters.

By Tristan Clark

It’s a simple fact that noir-style detective stories are awesome. Well, maybe not. But who doesn’t like a hard-boiled, down-on-his-luck, tough-as-nails private investigator who narrates the story in an oddly verbose monotone?

This is pretty much the kind of character you’ll be playing as in Hotel Dusk: Room 215, an adventure game for the DS that looks intriguing and compelling. You take control of Kyle Hyde, an alcoholic ex-cop who (for reasons unknown) shot his partner several years ago. Now, Kyle is ostensibly a door-to-door salesman, but does a big of investigating on the side – and it’s this that brings him to Hotel Dusk one night in 1979.

The story promises all the twists, turns, and shocking revelations that you’d expect from a game like this. The accompanying characters within the hotel are all more than they first appear, and you’ll have to gain their trust in order to unlock the mysteries of room 215.

You’ll do this in quite a novel way. All of Hotel Dusk is played with the DS rotated onto its site, in much the same way as Brain Age. You’ll use the touch screen to interact with objects and scribble down notes onto your notepad, as well as talk to the inhabitants of the hotel. It sounds like a setup that will be extremely intuitive and easy to grasp, and highlights the DS’s originality.

The graphics are an eclectic – but impressive – mix of styles. Cutscenes look like animated colour paintings; gameplay sections that allow you to walk around the hotel are rendered in full 3D; and the characters themselves look like they walked straight out of A-Ha’s Take on Me video clip – meaning they’re animated black and white pencil drawings. This juxtaposition of several different styles could have gone horribly wrong, but it all works together nicely in Hotel Dusk, and really gives the game a unique atmosphere.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 has already been released in Japan and the States, and overseas reviews have been pretty positive so far. If you’re into adventure games, or even just appreciate a good story, make sure you check this one out when it hits these shores!

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