by Greg - 01.25.07
I’m going to begin with a controversial statement. Hotel Dusk just might end up as game of the year for 2007.
Seriously.
Ok, so I am admittedly biased towards the genre, and the year is still incredibly young. I’ve also not completed the game. Oh, and I did import Trace Memory from Europe before they announced that it would come to the US. Still, Hotel Dusk is one of the best DS titles I’ve ever played, if not the best. Essentially, this is a film noir-style mystery serial. Much of the artwork is in black and white and the dialogue between the gents and the dames is filled with many of the cliches of the film genre. That dialogue is extremely well written, kudos to NoA Treehouse for doing their homework. This is the best localization since Phoenix Wright. The story is compelling and flows at just the right pace. The puzzles are clever and make good use of the touch screen. The artwork.. Oh, the artwork.
The artwork of Hotel Dusk is quite possibly its most breath-taking attribute. Cing are not the masters of 3D. Trace Memory wasn’t the best looking game ever. The backgrounds in Hotel Dusk are also pretty bad. However, you won’t even notice the backgrounds when you’re looking at the breathtaking hand-drawn character artwork. Even if you’ve seen high-res screenshots on the internet, you won’t get the full effect until you see this game in action. Unlike Phoenix Wright’s still characters, the hand-drawn characters of Hotel Dusk move and sway. They pose dramatically and give off real emotions. Even if you were playing this game in a language you couldn’t read, you’d still get a lot of detail from the movements and expressions on the characters. I’ve always insisted that the best looking games are 2D, and Hotel Dusk’s artwork makes a good case for that.
Nintendo has committed their first major blunder of the year by not advertising this title and giving it a minuscule print run. They should have given this better box art and slapped the “Touch Generations” logo on there at least. Elite Beat Agents was included as a Touch Generations title. Hotel Dusk has at least three times the potential mainstream appeal. Is your father tired of Brain Age? Get him Hotel Dusk. Does your mom read detective novels during her free time? She’d love Hotel Dusk. Hotel Dusk is a cross between a game and a fantastic mystery novel, and it is absolutely perfect for the exact same audience that they are marketing Touch Generations to. So, why on Earth are they not advertising Hotel Dusk? Why on Earth did they make this game hard to find? That is an absolute blunder on their part, one they should fix while they still can.
My final review should go up sometime next week, so I’ll go into more detail about this game then. For now, I can assure you that this is worth your money if you like the adventure genre, film noir movies, or a good mystery. Check out the official Hotel Dusk website for more media.
