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Just checked out of Hotel Dusk: Room 215

A

Apenheul

Member
I remember that Hotel Dusk got a lot of hate from GAF when it came out and more than a year after my purchase I decided to give the game a chance and put it in my DS. Just ten minutes ago I watched the ending after playing the game for about 15 hours (sweet spot for me) and I really feel like returning home again after a long vacation. Let me just tell you I LOVE this game so much even though it has it's share of flaws.

The game is hindered by aweful game design decisions, you can die in this adventure. It's not a new concept I know, I had it happen with Broken Sword but it was never so annoying as in Hotel Dusk. I died a lot of times just because apparently I had an item I shouldn't hold or because I wanted to hear someone out in a different way than the developers intended. The other gripe I have with the game is that events are scripted in a way that you need to do certain things in a predetermined order or else the story doesn't advance. And for my personal taste there was way too much dialogue in the game, after five minutes of speaking to person A you make two steps and person B shows up immediately drawing you into another five minute dialogue.

What the game did succeed in for me is that I really felt I was in a hotel. I liked walking around and I tried to avoid looking on the map so I could be immersed. To me this game is more like an experience than an adventure game, for a little while I forget I'm supposed to solve mysteries there and I just walk around and talk to people. And that's another strength of the game: the characters are very interesting and like in Fire Emblem I felt that I was somewhat personally involved with them. Add to that the combination of nice music and an incredible atmosphere that never lets you go and I forgive the game for it's flaws and hope for another stay in Hotel Dusk somewhere in the future. Please Cing!

How was your stay?
 
I love this game.

I can't quite lay my finger on it. I guess the noir detective story is a bit of a fetish of mine. The main character has some major flaws (not seen to often in games). I surprisingly started to feel a connection with the characters. The climax was perfect without feeling out of place.

Dying was annoying, but damn if it didn't make me think long and hard about what I was about to do next when I saw the red
?
text.

Music was pretty ace as well. Very laid back.

When I bought it I never even opened it until about 2 months later. My friends couldn't make it for a night of drinking one night so I poured a glass of whiskey, lit a smoke and up curled up with this game.

I'd love to see the game make another. Not necessary a direct sequel or anything. You know new characters, new place, with maybe a few minor nods to the first. Something I'll look back on in 20 years as an "Ahhhh. That was pleasant."
 
I played it for about an hour total, then sold in on neogaf's buy/sell thread at a $20 loss.

I like the visual style a lot, but not much else about it. It just made me wish they had a DS cart that was nothing but page scans of the old "choose your own adventure" books.
 
I really liked this game. And had a ridiculous amount of fun just jotting random noted in my notebook.

Oh and thank you for not saying LTTP in your title.
 
I genuinely appreciate what it achieved but it just wasn't for me. I like reading but for a game this was too much, the story just wasn't that compelling in comparison to a decent novel and there was not much else to keep me playing. To be blunt, I found it boring as all hell.
 
Hoel Dusk was..... kind of interesting but very meh a lot of the time. The bourbon drinking scene was lol worthy but... yeah I dont know. I finished it I guess. As far as adventures go on the DS the Touch Detective games are much better (but for 'all the wrong reasons' mind you)
 
I loved it, but the game's more like an interactive book than a real game. Anyone that keeps that in mind could most likely enjoy it though. The characters all felt really well thought out, and the dialog was well written enough to even make me forget about how absurd it was that all those people just HAPPENED to be in such an important place, at such an important moment. Still though, the few puzzles it had were pretty fun and unique, and the way you hold the DS to play the game made me enjoy the book like quality of it all the more.

And I laughed like crazy when I solved the mouth to mouth puzzle.
 
Loved it but I think it's an acquired taste for non-adventure gamers. Excellent atmosphere with a story that I personally loved and memorable characters. Fantastic visuals and a great soundtrack. Puzzles were mediocre at best but did not detract from my experiences with the game in the least.


As far as adventures go on the DS the Touch Detective games are much better.
Click to expand...

Wow I could not disagree more.
 
bjork said:
It just made me wish they had a DS cart that was nothing but page scans of the old "choose your own adventure" books.
Click to expand...
If they could find a way to get those dozen or so Choose Your Own Adventure books that used the Mario and Zelda licenses, I'd be all over them.
 
BorkBork said:
Wow I could not disagree more.
Click to expand...

lets discuss :D

what didnt you like about the TD games? Overall the games did the whole comic adventure game thing very well, wonderful, fun characters and interesting puzzles and stories. As well as some seriously dark, twisted adult undertones... not to everyone's taste of course but a nice little 'cult' series nontheless
 
The graphic novel analogies are spot-on imo.

If this was originally billed as a graphic novel and not an actual adventure "game" I think a lot of these people dissing it would be 'aight with et den.
 
I like the Phoenix Wright stories much better -- they're more intricate and they make sense under scrutiny. I felt like the connections in Hotel Dusk were more tenuous. I liked the writing, though. The relationship between the cop and the crook was great. The stuff with the girl not so much.

I don't know if the game needed to be 3D and if it did, it needed more guidance, because I spent half the game wandering from room to room trying to trigger the next part of the story. That's why Phoenix Wright keeps the exploration simple. Because even a few options can make those bottlenecks seem impassable.
 
ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.

The "gameplay" was questionable, but I loved the characters, the music, and the setting. I also loved that the game isn't about saving the world, and that no one's life is at stake. It wwas refreshing to experience something that's really narrowly focused, and is just trying to tell a good tale of intrigue.
 
GDJustin said:
ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.

The "gameplay" was questionable, but I loved the characters, the music, and the setting. I also loved that the game isn't about saving the world, and that no one's life is at stake. It wwas refreshing to experience something that's really narrowly focused, and is just trying to tell a good tale of intrigue.
Click to expand...
If you like the music, you can download it from this website:
http://buttonbasher.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/hotel-dusk-soundtrack-download/
 
Jiggy37 said:
If they could find a way to get those dozen or so Choose Your Own Adventure books that used the Mario and Zelda licenses, I'd be all over them.
Click to expand...

There's enough Mario and Zelda spinoff shit to last a lifetime. Give me an adventure starring a Nintendo B-character, and it'd at least be interesting. Totakeke cutting a record deal, or a Moblin trying to get a medal in an archery contest or something.
 
Loved it. One of my top games of 2007. I just stayed in one Saturday just to go through it. You can argue about the 'quality' of certain aspects all day, but when it comes down to it, I was able to get wrapped entirely in the whole thing and loved every minute of it.
 
bjork said:
It just made me wish they had a DS cart that was nothing but page scans of the old "choose your own adventure" books.
Click to expand...
biggersmaller said:
The graphic novel analogies are spot-on imo.

If this was originally billed as a graphic novel and not an actual adventure "game" I think a lot of these people dissing it would be 'aight with et den.
Click to expand...
Josh approves...

348ltz6.jpg



I enjoyed the game for the first few hours, but eventually the game just got in the way. It's a very linear game, and aside from a couple of throw-away mini-games, there's really nothing to do but figure out your next destination or action. And it's slooooowwwww... I finished it for the story, which was disappointing, itself.
 
Ace Attorney > Hotel Dusk/Trace Memory > Touch Detectives, imo.

Hotel Dusk was refreshingly serious with a great art style, but as a game, Ace Attorney takes the crown. I hope that new detective game (the one with the strange hair) can deliver some sort of balance between the two.



DeathWasHere said:
Some quotes prelaunch.
Click to expand...
Who are you and what the fuck are you doing?
 
Haunted One said:
Ace Attorney > Hotel Dusk/Trace Memory > Touch Detectives, imo.

Hotel Dusk was refreshingly serious with a great art style, but as a game, Ace Attorney takes the crown. I hope that new detective game (the one with the strange hair) can deliver some sort of balance between the two.




Who are you and what the fuck are you doing?
Click to expand...
He's an idiot. He's doing idiotic things.
 
I agree that the game had it's share of flaws. It was pretty linear (in the conversations I mean), the story sometimes didn't make much sense, and it was pretty darn tedious at some points (having to reset the game constantly >___> ).

But at the end of the day when I put the game down all I could say was "dang that was a good game".
 
I got stuck right before the bourbon drinking game. I can't activate the event. Tried a guide online but I had already done what it said to do. If you don't do things exactly the way the game wants it craps out on you. I really tried to get into it too, and was pretty engaged for a little bit. But the horribly slow pacing of the dialogue and the other annoying flaws (just opening doors is annoying and requires a few steps) cripple the game.
 
More western than the Phoenix Wright games, great dialogue, I was REALLY stunned at first, but it kinda got boring near the end.

4 stars for me.
 
I think I stopped playing around the point where the main character went to dinner and proceeded to eat a steak in what felt like realtime.
 
Scenester said:
lets discuss :D

what didnt you like about the TD games? Overall the games did the whole comic adventure game thing very well, wonderful, fun characters and interesting puzzles and stories. As well as some seriously dark, twisted adult undertones... not to everyone's taste of course but a nice little 'cult' series nontheless
Click to expand...

Concerning Touch Detective, I also very much enjoyed the graphical style and interface. However, I prefer Hotel Dusk over it for the following reasons:

Length: I don't think I'm being picky or unreasonable to expect a game that's over 5 hours in length. I think I was at 4ish hours when I finished TD.

Pacing: I found, unfortunately, the first case of TD to be the best case. It seems that the game got progressively shorter and made less sense as you went on, culminating in a bonus case that I didn't find very appealing at all.

Story: I prefer the story in HD. It builds and builds until a very satisfying conclusion throughout the entire game, and ties up things very nicely without resorting to supernatural means (although there's a bit of mystery still regarding the "Wish Room"). It's not often I find an adventure game that does this well actually. How often do you find a game centering around art fraud?

Characters: Kyle Hyde's probably one of the best adventure game protagonists out there. I probably have a bit of bias since I love the hard-boiled detective personas. The scene that made the character for me was him at the bar downing his bourbon. Pure awesome.

Puzzle mechanics: Not that Hotel Dusk is too much better, but some of the item usage was seriously obtuse in TD. Plus in one of the cases (I think it was the third), there were barely ANY puzzles at all. Not cool.

Music: I have the soundtrack for Hotel Dusk on my MP3 player. It's fantastic, my favorite tracks being Big Dreams and Violet Sky. On the other hand, I found TD's music to be quite forgettable.

To be fair, I have not played the second TD game, but have tried to gauge impressions of it from various sources. Nothing I have read has indicated the game has significantly improved on the first one.
 
I bought it when it first released last year and bored to fucking tears(only played like 30 mins though :lol ). So I sold it.

But while looking for one of those Castlevania games a month ago, I stumbled upon it again and bought it again on a whim. Suffice to say after getting a few hours into it, I couldn't put it down. Definitely one of my favorite DS games.
 
Not one of the best, but on par with the Phoenix Wright sequels. The end was actually sort of surprising, but I hated the finding doors to knock on part. It got a little boring/annoying. What really got me was that you couldn't use a screwdriver (with apparently no purpose) to rewind a cassette. I mean seriously, who uses a pencil?

<3 Big Dreams
 
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