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S-L-O-W by today's standards

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 10
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Boring. I bought this game because it seemed neat that it was a myster story and you had to hold it like a book. Oh, boy is it like a book! If you like comic book mysteries you might enjoy this more than I did. It just takes so long to get to the point. Talking and talking.... and talking-- and you have to press the darned button after ever sentence! I'm used to Adventure of Zelda-- this just plods along, no real action, the most suspense is when you pass someone in the hallway. The ONLY reason I'm still trying to play it is out of pride-- and I paid [...]for it.

Yawn! Beyond boring!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Sorry, I don't really see how anyone likes this game, it's beyond me to find this entertaining when it's taking forever to get the story going, and I lost interest in the game. It's too boring for me. That's why I rate this 2 stars. Hotel Dusk story itself is not as appealing as other games. The conversations between the detective and the others seem to be taking their sweet time which you can not make the conversations go any faster as you would have like. For example: Phoenix Wright is colorful, comedy, and far more entertaining than this game. Forget this one, go for the series of Phoenix Wright games and it'll be worth every penny.

Sadly disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: March 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As a very 'old' gamer of 47, I'm an old hand at point and click games. This game, being new, is incredibly disappointing. The conversations between characters go on forever for no particular reason and actual game play is few and far between. The graphics stink. I was hoping for much more based on previous reviews, but was very let down. Hopefully, future DS games will approach this game genre again, but do a better job of it.

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...

Hotel Dusk

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: February 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game thinking that it was going to be a great detective/puzzle solver type, and it is, but I was upset that there was a predetermined path laid out for you to follow. What I mean by this is that when talking with someone, you can ask questions when they come up, but if you end up asking the wrong one, or just don't ask anything at all, as soon as you walk away, Kyle will think to himself,"Oh, wait I should've asked ______" So, I felt that if it had had more possibilities of where to go it could have been better.

However, if you have something on you that you shouldn't when the hotel manager checks your pockets/belongings you can get kicked out, which I thought was cool because it added a sense of having to think before you pick something up. But, if you do get kicked out, you can just start from your last checkpoint, so it isn't much of a set back.

Basically, I'd recommend this game to people who liked Trace Memory, and games similar to it. It is a good game that utilizes the many functions of the DS and I enjoyed playing it.

Refreshing at first, but then boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When I starting playing this game I thought that it was pretty cool and new, but actually it's more like a mediocre crime stroy. Your own participation in the game is minimal and all you really do is walk around and look at stuff. There are no real challenges besides finding the right door so the game can proceed. If you make the mistake and put the game down for a week(don't do it)you will find yourself ultra non motivated to play it again!
3 stars are for the idea and style of the game.

Hotel Dusk an average game...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: February 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Though original in concept and at the outset a compelling game visually there is much to be desired in this game. The story and animation are the only saving features of a game that grows tired and irritating very quickly. The gameplay is very slow even for this genre and involves more character dialogue than forward progress. Puzzles are solved relatively quickly for such longwinded scenarios and the end of chapter tests are quite daunting. you will be craving a quick save when playing. I recommend playing this game one chapter at a time with a backup game close at hand.

Such a lovely place, such a boring place....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: April 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, please note that this review is being written hopefully halfway through my gameplay of Hotel Dusk ("HD"). This game is basically a very limited choose-your-own-adventure style which involves you guiding the main character through numerous conversations and puzzles in order to gain clues to uncovering what happened to your ex-police officer partner. HD is unique in many respects: (1) the developers designed the game to be "read" like a book in that you will play the entire game holding the DS sideways, (2) the rendering of the characters in a sort of "animated sketch" is original and adds to the bookish feel of the game. (3) Some of the options for what your character can say are humerous and probably what a normal person would say in that situation (ie, kid playing on the stairs and is in your way - "Hey, Kid! Get outta my way!"), but unfortunately if you pick those choices, you usually get thrown out of the hotel and the game is over. The negatives of this game is that you spend most of the time reading text in coversation with the strange hotel guests, and when you aren't in conversation, what item you need to obtain or what puzzle you need to work out is pretty much the only option you have. I would have liked a little more open-ended adventure here, but instead this game gets bogged way down in reading text. While the game is unique in its feel and character renderings, if I wanted to read, I wouldn't have picked up my DS in the first place. I always end my play wanting more action and a little more room to explore.

You'll want to like it more than you actually like it

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: August 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Sure a noirish text adventure sounds like just the thing for DS owners who are sick of seeing every licensed pre-teen TV show property under the sun appearing on the handheld, but the truth (if you are honest about it) is that Hotel Dusk: Room 215 just doesn't end up cutting the mustard as a good game. Sure, it has great intentions, but so have plenty of games that turn out dull & boring.

Issues:
Difficulty - Not to unleash any spoilers, but who lifts an aluminum file cabinet with a crowbar?! And who identifies engraving on a pen with chalk (very tiny chalk in the corner of a chalkboard)? The game lulls you to sleep with conversations that are so pointless as to be inane (it even tells you in the book, just treat people nicely and they will tell you everything you need to know.) So it's ridiculously easy to pick the "right" conversations. But then on the rare occasions when you have to solve a puzzle, it's either pointlessly easy, or so obtuse as to make no sense even once you've figured it out. Those aren't 2 options i really look forward to: vacillating between pointlessly easy & pointlessly dumb.

Graphics - Yes, the A-ha video animation is cute & pleasant (for a bit) but let's face facts: that hotel must be a dump because it is wretched to look at. I mean, i can excuse the graphics if the story is good, but even i can't say too many kind words about these graphics. Blocky textures, muddy color palettes, jagged lines, it's pretty much a mess. Not exactly the lush graphics that lure you into a world, more like one that makes you walk really fast through it so you don't have to painfully ogle it.

Characters - Okay, Kyle Hyde is a pretty good main character, i'll give you that. But almost everyone else is an irritating caricature that makes me say, "Wow, i hate that guy...' or "Wow, is she annoying." A good game contains a hearty dose of likeable characters, otherwise it's like going to work at an office full of people you dislike. Heck, i can do that in real life!

So what you're left with, bottom line, is an occasionally interesting story that makes you put up with vapid commentary, muddy graphics, and a cast of folks who remind you of people you hate. You can decide whether or not Hotel Dusk is worth your time to slog through so many negatives to get to the limited amount of good stuff. Great idea, poor execution.

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.

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