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Good game overall.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a good game if you don't mind reading a lot. I really enjoyed it but was a little disapointed at the end because of how the story developed, I think it left me with many questions unanswered, I am not sure if there is going to be a sequel but I hope there is. Overall a good game for a good detective mystery person.

Not as good as I expected

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I read some great reviews on this game; one even came from my favorite (non-biased) electronic gaming magazine. Played it from start to finish and, well... I just expected so much more. My biggest beef was the extremely long dialogues. Play this game if you like the idea of walking around in a small hotel, talking to people over, and over, and over, and over...

A little slow at first but once your into it...the game is GREAT!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I can understand why people thought this game was boring. For the first bit, it is alot of character development.

The story line is excellent and will really grab you. The graphics are unique. The whole role playing as a gritty down-on-your-luck detective -- really cool. This is one of the best DS games I have played.

We need a second one!!,

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Yes we do indeed, because this game is so great. It leaves you wanting more. Well, it did me anyway. It took me 4 days to complete so it's just about long enough without been too long. But I wouldn't of minded playing for longer. I won't go into the story, as you can read the other reviews for yourself. But it really should be owned by everyone who has a DS Lite. It reminds me a lot of 'Titanic - Adventure out of time. Which is an old PC game. Ive played the first 2 Phoenix Wright's also, and this game is on a level with those, as been my 3 favourite games that I own.

Walking around the hotel and getting to know people and their stories is great. And i agree with another reviewer, it is a bit like LOST where the characters lives and pasts all seem to have something to do with one another. Sometimes, when you question people, you can go for the nice questions (which you should do or it's game over)! or the harsh ones, and telling a little girl that it was her fault her mother left was so tempting! I know i'm evil, but I didnt. So the story is so clever, and the way the characters are drawn are so clever, definately reminds me of the video for Take on Me by A-HA.

I must also say that when I read the reviews in the uk before buying, I noticed the ones that said you would need to be near a computer to read walkthroughs, because you'd definately get stuck, and i was like 'oh no, i'm good at these game, i won't need no walkthrough.' Well, i did - 4 times!! :) So my big head is back to normal now. I recommend the same for you guys, be prepared to get stuck a few times and need help.

I don't understand the people who criticise this game for it's amount of dialogue. What do they expect? It's a detective game, detectives have to ask questions and learn about people's lives. So of course there would be a lot of stuff to read. But I loved learning about characters lives. I'm now awaiting the third Phoenix Wright installment, and I know I will love that too!!

Buy this game, immiediately!

Truly riveting! Better than Phoenix Wright

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to say that I have truly enjoyed this game thus far. I'm several chapters into it and I'm finding it hard to put down. I've previously played Phoenix Wright, and I enjoyed the game but I have to say I enjoy this a lot more. Hotel Dusk involves a lot more depth into the mystery and problem solving which makes it more interesting and realistic. I understand how some may not like this becuase it could possibly feel boring if ur not invested or interested in the story line, but the story line is rather amazing. There is A LOT of reading in this, and that's basically because it's almost like a mystery novel. I don't know if anyone of ya'll have ever read the Goosebump books where you choose what the characters do and depending on what you choose you flip to whatever page the books directs you too and that determines your outcome. But yea this game is sort of like that. I feel also as if the game is a little less linear than the Phoenix Wright games, because you can choose the wrong choice at times and still turn out with a similar outcome. There are only 2 frustration i have with this game. 1) Sometimes when you mess up and you get a game over the game takes you too far back to restart, which can be a little frustrating. But this can be fixed by saving religiously, but sometimes I do forget. 2) I have the old DS system which is ridiculously heavy and my hand and wrist get ridiculous tired trying to prop up the DS after a while, especially since you hold it like a book with one hand. However this isn't really the games fault, and if i could make myself put the game down im sure my wrist would not suffer as much. Nonetheless, this is a great game, I truly recommend it to anyone who's looking for any point and click fans or any mystery fans also. You won't be dissapointed!

Sounded better than it Played

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: November 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm no stranger to point-and-click games- harking back from the PC days of Myst and the like so I had high hopes for Hotel Dusk, however I was disappointed. After many hours of gameplay and a few chapters in, I simply got bored and frusterated. The visuals are very film-noir which matches with the "feel" of a detective novel, but they aren't appealing to me (flat, dark, sparse) and the characters weren't interesting enough for me to care about what happened to them. The music was repetitive and annoying. Some puzzles were easy, others were impossible (requring me to cheat once or twice just to keep moving forward because some of the triggers were impossible to locate). Some puzzles were just plain strange. At times the character simply had to walk around or sit and wait until a certain time (i.e. 6:00 pm) for something to happen or someone to come by to talk to. And heaven forbid you asked or said the wrong thing, because then it's game over. Overall the story and gameplay didn't hook me enough to keep me interested, and I ended up returning it unfinished. I've since picked up Trace Memory and am enjoying it much better, even though it came out before Hotel Dusk. The amount of reading didn't bother me, but I'd say this game is only good for hardcore detective or mystery fans who like plodding through this stuff because the rest will find it lacking.

I've played worse.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I won't say that Hotel Dusk is a bad game, but it's not a great game either, which is a shame because it wants to be so much better than it is.

The plot is simple enough at the outset. The story takes place in 1979, and centers around an ex-New York City cop turned travelling salesman named Kyle Hyde who's spending the night at a hole in the wall called Hotel Dusk. He's spent the last few years in search of his ex-partner, Bradley, last seen taking a header into the Hudson River after Kyle was forced to shoot him for going rogue, but Kyle's hunch is that Bradley's not dead. As the story progresses, Kyle gets to know the other patrons of the hotel, and discovers that not only are their lives intertwined with one another's, but with his own as well.

The story is beautifully written; there's plenty of humor to be had, the characters are extraordinarily well-developed, and although the dialogue occasionally lays on the 1970's American cop-movie stereotypes a little thick for my taste, the fact that Hotel Dusk was originally developed and released in Japan shows that the designers clearly did their homework. (It's not always clear whether Hotel Dusk is meant as an homage or a parody, though, because although it's clear that the designers took great pains to intertwine the characters' backstories, at times it feels like they're stretching credibility just a bit.) The game also makes good use of the DS's touch-screen capabilities, including an option to play either right- or left-handed, a necessity since the DS is meant to be held sideways, like a book; and it supports the Rumble Pak, although in such a weirdly limited fashion that I have to wonder why the designers bothered at all--if you don't have one already, don't bother buying it for this game, because honestly, you won't miss it. But truly, especially when compared to other games, the dialogue and story are what make Hotel Dusk shine.

So what's my problem with the game? I actually have a few. First, at the end of each chapter, the game requires the player to take a short quiz on everything that's happened so far (something that gamers familiar with Cing's previous DS title, Trace Memory, will find familiar). At first, it seems innocuous enough; but after second or third quiz, they just seem silly and even a little bit insulting, especially since they don't seem all that useful in keeping the player up to speed. This is compounded by the fact that the designers provide the player with an in-game notebook for just this purpose, although with only three "free" pages--the rest are used for puzzles and such--your space is extremely limited. (Also, although the player is supposed to simply write things down with the stylus as if on a piece of scrap paper, the game tends to make your handwriting look worse than it actually is. My advice: Write large!) Another issue is with the way the game handles conversations. Frequently, in the course of talking to another character, the conversation comes to a halt and the player has to choose one of two possible responses; while this does help the conversation to maintain a more natural flow, if the choice you make turns out to be wrong, it's entirely possible that the game could end right then and there, or at least damage your relationship with said character. Besides, some of the conversations are pretty long, another reason why the ability to save in mid-conversation would be handy. My biggest beef, though, is with one puzzle in particular, which sees Kyle locked in a room in the basement with his oxygen running out. The game assumes that the player has picked up a certain item in an earlier chapter; if not, the puzzle becomes a great deal more difficult, involving lots of tedious guesswork, and at least one save-and-restore since Kyle will most likely suffocate before the player stumbles across the solution. It wouldn't be so irritating if the item in question weren't so easy to overlook. Similarly, another puzzle requires you to walk past a certain point in a hallway; since that point happens to lie right next to the wall, the player can walk past it a thousand times without ever activating it. While I have to give Cing credit for avoiding the "walking dead" scenario (which I consider a hallmark of bad puzzle design), these instances still seem needlessly annoying.

Like Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk has several endings, depending on actions you've taken over the course of the game, as well as a "starred" game which is essentially a replay of the same game but with minor differences. Unfortunately, Hotel Dusk seems like a step backward from its predecessor; for all its triumphs as a work of fiction, as a game, it falls somewhat flat. I won't say it's not worth playing, but I can't say I'd recommend paying full-price for it.

Check in to Hotel Dusk

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Play this game.

I can honestly say that this is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played. I barely put it down until I had beaten it. I was engrossed to an obscene degree. The best mystery game I've played in a long time.

Okay, now for the specifics.

Style: The art style for Hotel Dusk is really cool. The drawn look of the characters is far more interesting than simply making a 3-D render of them. The black-and-white characters create a moody, Noir feel, a fitting atmosphere for a mystery game of this caliber.

Gameplay: Gameplay may be the weakest aspect of the game. The game controls are a little disorienting, but not awful. The 1st person screen is hard to focus on while moving, as the controls move you in cardinal directions rather than moving you forward or backward or turning you.
Some of the puzzles are really bizarre. You really have to think outside of the box to figure some of them out, and not in a good way.
Solving the mysteries that surround each character is incredibly satisfying when you get it right. The system generally requires you to make logical connections rather than just blindly guessing. The main problem here is that getting a wrong answer is very costly; you'll probably get a game over and have to start either from the last save point or the last checkpoint. And you can't really skip through dialog, so it's a pretty tedious penalty for being wrong.
The best thing about the controls is the fact that anyone can pick them up pretty quickly, gamer or no. The simplicity of the controls makes the whole thing very accessible.

Story: This is what you play the game for. This is why I rated this game with 5 stars. The story is absolutely phenomenal. It's a genuinely interesting mystery. The characters are developed incredibly well, and everything ties together very neatly. The story will suck you in and not let you out until you've gotten all the way through it.

Music: Not the best, but workable. It definitely sounds like hotel music and doesn't get in the way, but it's not particularly memorable. Kind of muzak-y.

I know I've been pretty critical in this review, especially considering my high rating. But the story and characters are just that good. Absolutely worth playing through.

Not for the reading impaired.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: September 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I LOVED this game. It pulled me in and made me finish it. When I got to the end (little bit of a spoiler: it wasn't a "happy" ending but it did come to a resolution, sorta)I was still thinking about it days later. Why the three stars on fun and the title I gave this review?

This game is basically a novel, you read a LOT. Now for someone like me who can sit down and read a good book all day, someone who appreciates good character development (little spoiler: which is crucial because virtually all of the characters are inter-related in the plot of the story), someone who thoroughly enjoys reading this game is a perfect score all across the board. Don't, however, expect any fast-paced action (there's only one section where "time" is crucial.

In short, this is an excellent game if and only if you enjoy reading.

Excellent, absorbing game, despite some rather obtuse puzzles

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I heartily recommend this game to anyone who doesn't have a problem with lots of text. The storyline is absolutely brilliant, as many other reviewers have already pointed out, and the graphics and art are interesting and a pleasure to look at. Yes, some of the puzzles require some odd leaps in logic (spoiler: chalk to read the engraving on a pen? What the hell?), but others are wonderfully intuitive, or just downright clever.

Unfortunately, this game is now virtually impossible to find new, and seems to be out of print. Try picking up a copy while you still can!

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