The only thing outshines the thrilling story of Hotel Dusk is the way it utilizes NDS features in game play.

User Rating: 9 | Hotel Dusk: Room 215 DS
By Lovely_beauty | Review Date:
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (HD) offers an excellent storyline like a real detective novel, which can satisfy the most fastidious fans of Adventure genre. 12/24/1976: the police inspector Kyle Hyde was in New York police office when he received a phone call telling about the dubious deeds of Brian Bradley, one of his colleagues. Following the trace, Hyde caught up Bradley in River Hudson harbour and had to open fire unwillingly. Bradley's body fell down to the river but was nowhere to be found later. Right after the incident, Hyde left the police force when still obsessed by the thought of Bradly's survival. He started his new job in Red Crown - a private detective firm in disguise as a business company but could not stop thinking about the old case, until a day... 12/28/1979: three years later, Hyde happened to visit Hotel Dusk to do a simple task. But right there, he unexpectedly discovered the clue to the old incident. Everybody in this hotel had their secret, it was his part to uncover and assemble those details to lay bare whatever was beneath Bradley's action.

With such a mysterious beginning, HD seems to be quite promising to anyone loving investigating game. But once you have started with the game, you will joyfully find out it has more to offer. The truth is broken into many pieces, each of which is hiding inside a character in the hotel. Hence, game play of HD is first and foremost based on lengthy conversations between the former police with these people. Though it really takes time to listen to these conversations, most of them are undeniably concise and informative. You may skip some talks and still can finish main quest line, but to contemplate the whole story, I would advise you not to do so. Normally, you have to choose one out of two questions in a situation, the proper one will save your time and effort, the wrong one may cause trouble or even lead to Game-over. It's where HD requires some deduction from players. Unfortunately, voice play is very poor, making you feel like listening to a typewriter and reducing your concentration on the story.

Besides conversations, puzzles are also an important factor in Adventure game. In HD, both simple and tough puzzles prove quite attracting since they creatively make use of NDS features. Some of them are very amazing, really beyond my imagination. For example, there is a quest which requires to use 2 styluses to control 2 electric circuit breakers simultaneously. In another case, you have to fold and open your NDS quickly to take the message behind a picture. such original ideas are certainly a very strong point of HD.

With all I have said, this is no doubt a desirable game, but that's not all. The absorbing story is presented in a satisfactory graphics. Interior of the hotel is detail designed in 3D, very spectacularly. All character models are built 2D with cel-shading style, each has their own feature. From the small girl Melissa to the old woman Helen has some distinctive countenance suitable to their role in the story. It's not exaggerating to place HD among games with most original and beautiful graphics style. As for sound, besides the horrible voice act, other parts manage to fulfill their task and prove acceptable.

Hotel Dusk is an inspiring example which lives up to all expectation from fans of Adventure genre.

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