Hyde and Seek! (Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS))

Member Name: Stunt 101

Product:	Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS)
Date:	08/08/07 (1237 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant visuals; same great gameplay from the Phoenix Wright games; top notch dialogue.

Disadvantages: Slow paced; not for the gore hungry; no spoken speech; no replayability.

As you all know, I was a major fan of Phoenix Wright, the adventure game where you fight in cort and get justice for the right people. Now, from the makers of the adventure game, Another Code: Two Memories, this is a noir style detective mystery, packed with interesting plotlines, a compelling story, excellent visuals and well written dialogue. It’s slow and not for everyone, but fans of adventure games are in for a treat. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is one of the best games the DS has to offer, even if it doesn’t reach the calibre of the original Phoenix Wright.

-(The Story)-
With adventure games, the story can make or break the game. In the case of Hotel Dusk: Room 215, this is the best thing about a game. Sure, a story about a room doesn’t seem like a good plot at first, but there’s so much more to the story that that. It’s 1979, and basically, door-to-door salesman Kyle Hyde (Jekyll anyone?), who is a washed up cop that hung his badge up after shooting his partner, has been sent to Hotel Dusk-which is pretty much a dump. The room he gets is Room 215, the room that grants ‘wishes’, or so at least the owner says it does. So as Hyde stays in the hotel, he’ll discover many mysteries and solve puzzles, as well as maybe find what he’s looking for.

That’s just opening the opening cellophane of the story, there’s so much to the story. Almost everyone has some kind of secret, which Hyde will think; help find what he’s looking for. There are so many questions to be found, like who’s this girl in white who won’t talk, why did the owner make up names for his rooms, why doesn’t the owner like cops in his joint-the list goes on and on! The character development is excellent, I really grew to like these characters (especially Hyde himself) and the story itself was really compelling once I got more into the game.

-(The Controls)-
Remember Brain Training? You had to hold the DS like a book? Well you have to do this with Hotel Dusk. It makes more sense, as it’s almost like a murder adventure book. The game also really takes advantage of the Touch screen. Most of the game is done with the touch screen. You advance text with it, move around and touch items as well. You can use the D-Pad or buttons to advance text and move, but the rest you must use the touch screen. As far as holding the DS like a book, it felt weird at first as I haven’t played Brain Training, but it was great once I got used it it. If you don’t like holding it like that, then you won’t be able to change it.

-(The Gameplay)-
Hotel Dusk plays a lot like Phoenix Wright, except it doesn’t have the courtroom scenarios. It’s just as linear, as you have to do something specific to trigger an event to progress, and there’s a lot of clue finding and things of that nature, as well as lots and lots of talking. The gameplay involves a lot of finding clues and solving puzzles. But the puzzles are great in which they don’t slow you down as they’re so hard, but they don’t make you frustrated. Plus, the character’s are likable and the dialogue is excellent which makes conversations much better.

So, what does most of the game consist of? Talking! As soon as the game begins, there is a just lot of dialogue to read. The dialogue is well written, but I’ll admit that sometimes there’s just too much. I mean, I remember a part in the game where for about 10 minutes, I was just reading and reading text, as well as tapping an arrow on the DS screen, which was a bit tedious. But hey, it was interesting, and if you don’t read, there’s no point in playing as it will be even more boring. As an ex-detective, Hyde will be able to ask people questions at times. When you talk to a character, there will either be questions during the middle of conversations when the character is acting strange, or said something worth questioning. You can choose to leave it, or question. Then you can ask questions at the end, where things came up in conversations that you wanted to ask about. People can ask you questions as well, which you can answer to.

This is where the risk of getting GAME OVER comes in. if you say the wrong thing, it’s game over. So, for example, an old crook who Kyle busted says were you joking when you said you hung up your badge. You can say either yeah I was joking and I am a cop or no I am a salesman. If you say you’re a salesman then it’s fine, but if you say you’re a cop, the guy will tell the owner that you’re a cop (the manger hates cops taking in mind) and the manager will throw you out, resulting in game over. You pretty much get game over if you’re thrown out or screw up in getting some info you need.

Aside from the standard conversations you have with people, you also have these conversations where you’re trying to get the person to tell you their secrets. What will happen is that you’ll get them in an alone situation, like in the person’s room they’re renting, and it will begin. Usually you’ll start by telling them bit-by-bit what you know about them already. Once you’ve hit that stage, you’ll get some questions to ask. Some of these involve you guessing things about the secret, like how they betrayed or things like that. You can guess wrong with these. Sometimes you’ll just get to ask it again, but a lot of the time it caused a GAME OVER screen as they don’t spill, and you don’t get the secret.

The game can be frustrating with the GAME OVER screen, mostly thanks to the save system. You can save at any time, but the risk with that is that if you save before a bad situation that you can’t get out of then you have to start the whole game again. That happened to me, and I had spent about 5 hours with the game. So to have 5 hours wasted annoyed me, which is why after I didn’t use the save system. I only saved when a chapter finished, which I knew wouldn’t be a bad time. Also, sometimes what you have to do wasn’t very clear. Sometimes it was just me not paying attention, but sometimes it wasn’t. For example, you had to go to a room to progress, but they didn’t tell you which room it was, so you were stuck unless you guess or used a walkthrough. It was rather frustrating.

At the end of each chapter, there’s usually a ‘summary’ where Hyde thinks about the past events in that chapter. A lot of the work is done by Hyde, but you also have to do something. Basically, the game will ask you questions about the past events in the chapter. It will be a piece of cake if you’re observatory, and pretty easy even if you don’t notice little details. It’s good for reminding you about what’s happened, but it feels a bit tacked on and could of just had a summary for you to read in the options menu.

Aside from dialogue, there’s also exploring and puzzles. On the exploring side of things, you can explore quite a bit of Hotel Dusk. You obviously can’t go into people’s rooms, unless that’s what is meant to happen, and there’s some out-of-bounds places like the owner’s room or the bar while it’s closed, but there’s still a fair bit of ground to cover. Unfortunately, early on the game can be a bit hard as people who are needed are not here or items needed don’t work. But as you progress, the game makes more sense and is less challenging. Besides, if a game was easy there would be little fun. Also, there’s little need for wandering as people or items needed aren’t that far from you. It’s probably because Hotel Dusk isn’t the size of America.

The puzzles are great too. The puzzles aren’t too complicated, but they’re not easy. They usually involve you finding an item to do something, for example right at the beginning of the game your key to your suitcase gives away and breaks, meaning you can’t get into your case. That’s a bad thing as the owner wants you to pay in advance. So you have to find something to get it open. I did find something I could use, but I needed to find another item to be able to use it first. It’s not hard to figure out what I needed and once I found it wham I got it open. You also do searching In rooms. The way this works is that you can look at certain places in a room, like in a corner of the room, and search all of there. You can move at about 90 degrees in the part, and use your touch screen to pick out important items.

-(The Graphics)-
Aside from the great gameplay, Hotel Dusk also has an incredible visual style. The characters look stunning. They are in 2D, but rather than using the same manga style as Phoenix Wright, they all have this weird sketched look to them. It looked like the people from A-Ha’s Take on Me which looked stunning. They all animated as well, which looked great. All the people had different animation to each other, though they didn’t have too many different animations by themselves. The facial expressions were top notch as well. You could definitely tell when the characters were angry, sad, happy or scared. But Hotel Dusk itself was in full 3D. You can definitely tell it’s run down, as all the colours are a rather bland brownish colour. All the wallpaper looked rotten and the doors look as old as can be. It was perfect for the tone of the game. And it all looked smooth-there were little jaggies to be seen.

-(The Sound)-
The sound was great, mostly due to the excellent dialogue. Sure, there’s not spoken text (probably due to the amount of text there is in the game), but it’s all superbly written. It all suits the characters tones, like Hyde is pretty sarcastic and you can tell in the dialogue. The music is good, though there could have been more variety. The music is pretty jazzy, which really suits the tone of the game. The effects were great, with some gunshots here and there and perfect footstep sounds.

-(Replay Value)-
Hotel Dusk is a long game. I finished it in about 17 hours of play, which is nearly as long as the original Phoenix Wright. But, just like Wright, the game has limited replayability. Most of the surprises aren’t worth a second play, and, as good as the text is, it’s not going to be as fun as you’ve read all of it before. Still, the 17 hours Hotel Dusk gave me were brilliant fun.

-(Score)-
Controls=10
Gameplay=8
Graphics=9
Sound=8
Replay Value=8
Overall Score=8.6

-(Ending Comments)-
So, I have made many comparisons to the Phoenix Wright games, and the real question is Hotel Dusk as good? Not quite, but it’s still flipping brilliant. It looks stunning, is a joy to read and play and is a lengthy adventure. Sure, there’s no spoken speech and replayability, but it doesn’t matter-this is well worth a place in your DS collection. Another piece of evidence to show adventure games are still fun.

-(Where You Can Buy It)-
Amazon for £24.98 or used and new from £20.40

-(Extra Info)-
This game was published by Nintendo and developed by Cing
This was released on April 13th, 2007 and is a DS exclusive

Thanks for reading. Stunt 101

Summary: ADVENTURE GAMES LIVE!