Hotel Dusk: Room 215 review

A lot of hype was buzzing around Hotel Dusk: Room 215, and there’s good reason. It looks real purdy. The screenshots may appear nice, but if you’ve never seen the game in action, you’ve seen nothing yet. If you’re old enough to remember a music video by a-ha (insert Norwegian 80s pop group joke here), then that’ll give you a good idea how the visuals play. Hotel Dusk isn’t all about a unique art style though, because there’s a lot of good gameplay here, for a text-driven adventure game at least.

Most noticeable is the game’s extensive use of the touch screen. You’ll be examining objects, playing a variety of mini-games, and traversing the entire hotel in 2D and 3D simultaneously. Many parts of the environment are interactive, and the protagonist always has something to say about each. Clicking on everything will eventually yield some repeated phrases, but the variety is pretty impressive and the game interchanges the comments every so often.

The game’s noir style isn’t limited to the presentation, because the story also holds such elements—particularly the moral ambiguity of its many vivid characters. Hotel Dusk is a character-driven adventure game with simple enough puzzles thrown in. By the time you reach the game’s end, you would have discovered the secrets of each character it introduced, and while parts can be melodramatic, they’re quite in-depth. The audio complements Hotel Dusk’s unique visuals with a range of jazz tunes that give the game its thick atmosphere. There’s no voice work though, but this is understandable because of the handheld’s hardware limitations.

Hotel Dusk’s many shades of gray in color and characters give it an unnatural appeal. The game provides enough twists and turns to leave you guessing, and the ending is satisfyingly long. While Hotel Dusk doesn’t tie up all loose ends, its finale is satisfying.

The game is not without its faults: Despite the 70s setting, there’s not much in Hotel Dusk’s design that points to the decade’s distinct style (think clothing, hair, furniture, music, etc.). On the gameplay department, tedium can set in when you’ve hit the trial-and-error phase of a puzzle.

Replaying Hotel Dusk won’t be part of your to-do list for a while because like all adventure games, the first attempt is the most enjoyable. Then again, the same thing goes for many RPGs. The game is linear, yes, but its well-made dialogue contains many pitfalls that give you the impression that you can miss out on a lot of information when you ask the wrong one. Hotel Dusk is one of the better-made adventure games for the DS, and it’s worth the price tag.

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