My oh my how I love these adventure games. From the guys that brought us the sleeper hit Trace Memory comes a game with such genius writing and a character-driven mystery plot, it could even compete with a best seller mystery novel. It's been a long time since i've played a game with a story that treats all its characters as having a reason of being in it other than just simple NPC conversation ( and with a classic-noir setting to boot ! ). It's December 28th 1979, you start off the game arriving at Hotel Dusk while on a journey to find a long lost friend, and from the moment you enter, you feel like you're in for a heck of a ride. If you've played Trace Memory you'll be in familiar territory, the usual exploring and puzzle solving is here, but this time the puzzles take a back seat and character conversations have the spot light. You'll have to go through alot of long conversations ( which are brilliantly documented and paced) with the guests and staff of the hotel, so be prepared for alot of reading, and they won't be simple conversations like in Trace Memory where you just simply read to advance the story, but you'll also have to answer and ask the right questions when prompted to in some situations or else you'll be lead to a Game Over screen (kinda like Phoenix Wright but with only one chance), while also doing unnecessary actions in game could lead to a Game Over as well, this helps make the game even more enjoyable and fun to play as it allows you to speculate and make assumptions, which ultimately leads to greater satisfaction when something's accomplished and you could say that it makes the game feel longer.
In the end, with such a unique setting, fantastic art, longer than average playing hours and a story with more twists and turns than a best seller, I find it hard not to recommend this. If you like Trace Memory or adventure games in general, definitely buy this. However, if you like your games to have a bit more action in them, I strongly suggest you rent first or don't bother with it altogether, because the story's pacing is as slow as a turtle and if you dunno what to do next you'll get bored in minutes if not seconds, and as with all adventure games, replayability is at a minimum.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215, developed by Cing, the developer responsible for 2005's Trace Memory, is an adventure game that steps away from the boundaries of the average point-and-click adventure. Like Cing's previous effort... Read Full Review
When the DS first came out, I was really hoping for some point-and-click adventure games. Games like Myst, these are easy to pick up, difficult to solve, and are engrossing. They simple fun, like a really good interacti... Read Full Review
