Great story that keeps you playin' til you finish!
The year is 1979, and you play Kyle Hyde, former detective for the NYPD. For three years, he's been looking for answers as to why his ex-partner went bad, and now he finds himself at Hotel Dusk, where every guest seems to be hiding something, and some of those secrets may just lead him to the answer he's been seeking...
Ok, now that I've had my melodramatic moment, let's break the game down, shall we?
The graphics are great. They're not the kind that's meant to dazzle you with its stunning display of technology; rather, it's the style of the graphics that really grabs you. The 3D environments look nice enough for the DS, but all of your characters appear as black-and-white pencil-ins. It is an interesting take fits the overall mood of the game nicely.
The sound isn't bad, but it's not especially memorable either. The music wasn't stunning, and generally fit what was happening onscreen. The game could definitely have benefitted from a larger variety of music though, as you'll be listening to the same tunes over and over again.
The gamplay is where this game really shines. It's basically an interactive book, but rather than just having the plot fed to you simply by turning a page, you have to work to solve the mysteries of Hotel Dusk. You hold the DS like you would a book, and then you can use the touch screen to guide Hyde around the hotel on a map, meanwhile, the other screen shows you moving through the 3D environment in first-person. A neat idea. I liked it. You can examine just about anything in the environment, and you guide Hyde through his conversations with those that work at the hotel and the guests. But careful not to get to pushy! Acting too suspicious will either result in the hotel owner becoming wary of you and kicking you out before you can stick your nose too far into his business, or it can result in a secret-hiding guest losing trust in you and refusing to give you any more information. Game over, and time to try again. The puzzles in the game range in difficulty from the blatantly obvious, to the "how in the world would I have figured THAT out on my own?" But don't worry, the latter doesn't happen too often and actually, that was probably just me and my denseness anyway. :) My only complaint is that the ending comes at you pretty fast and doesn't really feel like an ending, though it does wrap everything up...
All in all this was a great game. It fits snugly into the Adventure genre and tells a compelling story that'll keep you guessing until the very end.