[Pijaibros]

This is true?

No wonder I can't find it. It's already bad enough that they usually charge a $5 premium on DS titles. That does suck.
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[luvcraft]

[Rucio]

I just got it from Amazon.com. Next week at this time I should be enjoying the game. I also picked up Pheonix Wright: Ace Attourney, because I have been trying to find it used for months.
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"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[rye]

I'm debating whether I should buy this now, or buy it off ebay for $10 in a few months.

I second the sentiment that it seems strange NoA is just sort of ignoring this. This game could totally be another "touch generations" title. advertise in time magazine or something!

[negativedge]

Two things here.

One: I'm finding it very, very difficult to care about video games in the slightest anymore. It's games like this that keep me around long enough to perk my ears up on occasssion. So, for that I'm grateful. Too bad I don't own a DS!

Two: Why is it that ninety percent of the games anyone would want to play on the DS are impossible to find? I mean, what the fuck are all these people that buy the system playing? Mario twenty different times?

[oneEIGHTkevin]

I always think the same thing. Sure I bought Mario but it's not what sold me on the system.

Also I just copped out and ordered this from Amazon rather than trying to goto an actual store. I hate stores.
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[rye]

i am going to see if they have it at target this afternoon, but only because i have to go over there to buy shampoo, packing tape, and deodorant.

[sethsez]

[Pijaibros]

I found this at Best Buy. They had like 6 copies. Apparently they sell DS imports too, since I saw Naruto and Bleach for $50 a piece.

I would play it, but I just had a feast of a dinner at an Italian family's house for setting up their fancy new HD set.

Man am I full, I need to put on the sweatpants now.
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[Dracko]

I'm tempted to buy a DS for this game.
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[Gideon Zhi]

I have it and have played it for about an hour. My experience so far is thus:

-I wish I could speed the text up just a little.
-Characters are well fleshed out.
-The faux pencilart on the portraits is really cool. But we knew that.
-I have experienced my first semi-nonsensical item puzzle. This involved an item which I knew I would need, but which the character would not pick up until he thought he needed it. Now he thinks he needs something else, and even though I'm staring right at it he still won't pick it up (nor will he tell me why he won't pick it up.) Bastard.
-Plenty of touchscreen interaction. If you're lefty, you can hold the DS the other way around, I think. I imagine this means navigating with the ABXY buttons.
-Plot is good, so far. Seems a bit of a hackneyed throw-together what-a-coincidence thing, but there's probably an explanation buried later in the game.
-The first chapter, 5:00PM-5:30PM, took me 90 minutes to complete. What?
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[Sushi D]

[firenze]

[Gideon Zhi]

[Kappuru]

[klikbeep]

SPOILERS, jeez!

Bought and shipped from PlayAsia same day. You might try there.

[SuperWes]

Got from Target last night. It was $30 and it's amazing.

-Wes
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[skonrad]

Still can't find it in stores and I have a flight to Vegas tonight that I'm going to now have to fill with reading and the company of my friends / girlfriend. Disgusting.

[Rucio]

I love the blatant stealing that happens in this game. I love how the game ends if you get thrown out. I hate when I don't get to pick something up I know I'll need until Kyle decides that he needs it.
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"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[internisus]

Crossposted from here for anyone who's on the fence here. There are other impressions in that thread, as well.



I finished Hotel Dusk last night. I really really really really really liked it! It has recognizable roots in Trace Memory's design, but it's a longer and more serious game and story. I can't be certain after only one playthrough, but a little experimentation showed branching non-critical conversations to yield varying results, meaning that certain parts of characters' stories are discovered optionally. This sense of non-linearity pervades the game in some regards, but it is also firmly anchored by set events and game-critical conversations that I like to think of as boss fights.

Many will likely be of the opinion that these set events keep the game feeling too rigid. For example, I found myself very frustrated at one point when I received an item without any urgent context and, wandering about the hotel, could find no one to talk to. I spent 15 minutes looking around every room and knocking on every door with nothing to do. I had to resort to gamefaqs in this instance to discover that there was a tiny adventure gamey thing that I had missed which would allow me to learn more about the item. Only after doing this was I able to continue -- or even just find someone to talk to. I also expect many of you, my peers, to be irritated by some of the physical DS gimmick puzzles, which, again, are a clear throwback to Trace Memory. Fortunately, there are a good number of straight and hard-boiled little puzzles -- my favorite is using a computer terminal near the end of the game. I would have liked more information-based interaction with practical objects like that. Besides that example, however, most of the detective action comes off as pretty light stuff. Neither the puzzles nor the deductions are difficult for either the gamer or the detective in you.

Another problem with the game's structure is that it renders the very cool notebook nearly moot. When I began the game, I immediately started in on the notebook, writing down times for promised meetings with certain characters, the hours for the restaurant, etc. However, since going to such meetings and locations is the only way to progress time in the game, and since Kyle reminds himself mentally at such times anyway, there's really no point to using the notebook in this way. The only other consistent use I had for it was keeping track of what happened 6 months, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, and 10 years ago, and that was purely for the fun of keeping the story straight as it slowly unraveled. Basically, there was no practical need to keep track of anything at all with the notebook, and that disappointed me a lot.

Despite these shortcomings, I feel pretty comfortable saying that this is the most enjoyable game I've played for the past two years. Where to begin? Well, we all knew in advance about the art style, but let me tell you, it is used to exceptional effect in the expressive animation of the characters. Guys like Kyle and Dunning are made intensely memorable by a perfect match of dialogue style and animation; the ways they cock their heads and squint their eyes and gesture with their hands vividly accompany their respective Raymond Chandler and relaxed country text-speech. Naturally, all of the character design is spot-on, and, of course, the writing is exceptional, to the point where even reading the thorough summaries for chapters you've completed is a joy.

It might -- and will, I imagine -- be said by some that the plot is hackneyed, since everything boils down to one very big set of coincidences, but I'm not the sort to mind that. Actually, I rather like that kind of story, so long as there is an indication of forces that have planned for such coincidences to come together, and in this case I feel that it works just fine. The story is much longer and more complex than Trace Memory, which is to be expected, considering that Hotel Dusk is a 15-20 hour game and that it involves a much, much higher dialogue-to-exploration ratio than its predecessor. Let me tell you, that complexity gave me a number of really nice high sensations during intense interrogations at the ends of some of the earlier chapters in which I began to see how the pieces might fit together and how the seeds for future sub-stories might relate.

The late '70s noir setting and the music round out the game's flavor beautifully. You can examine pretty much every object in the hotel, and some of Kyle's comments are so dry that I laughed out loud from time to time. For instance, upon looking at yet another wooden table in one room, he said, "It's a bookcase. Wait, no, that's a table. My mistake." The game is by turns coy and sinister, but, I feel compelled to repeat, it is a joy throughout. I was so delighted that I immediately started to play the first chapter over again after completing the game, just to see some faces again.

It seems to me that Hotel Dusk is a testament to the visual novel format's ability to render an involving story in a very different fashion than a book. As I said, the game is fundamentally linear and controlled, but it doesn't always feel that way, and in the case of conversations, there are definitely branching possibilities and optional chunks of development that one might miss. But more than that, the simple fact of your interaction and the subtly earnest presentation grant this story a strength it likely would not find in print form. That is not to say that the story would not work as a book -- it is good enough that, if written properly, I can certainly see it that way. However, as a visual novel / adventure, it is a far more endearing and charming experience. I've played precious few visual novels, and all, I believe, have been here, on the DS. I wish even more now for more of them.

[firenze]

Hey! I just realized this game supports the rumble pak. Gonna have to go make my trusty cart jut out of my DS lite now to test it out.

I swear, even though DS rumble is pretty much just a crappy buzz, I might end up breaking down and importing one of the DS-lite sized rumble paks...

[firenze]

So I've been playing a lot of Hotel Dusk the past week.

I've had the Dreamcast out since this weekend and today I got the urge to play Shenmue for some unknown reason. Well, I think the unknown was really my subconscious calling out for a similar experience to Hotel Dusk. I felt the same vibe from Shenmue as I am with Hotel Dusk. It's largely a game about conversations, with a mildly clunky interface. Both are based on a similar hour-by-hour structure, where certain things happen at specific times. Ryo writes everything down in his NOTEBOOK like a damn detective! I can't believe the similarity didn't strike me before.

By the way, I was informed by my wife that Shenmue was the most boring and awful video game she's ever seen. And she actually plays some games, even some MMORPGs, which when you get into some of the tedium of leveling up are some of the most boring gaming experiences around.

[sethsez]

I hate Shenmue so very, very much, and find it infinitely less interesting than killing rats for five hours.

And no, I don't like MMORPGs.

[haircute]

I went to wal-mart tonight after work to buy a clothes hamper and some laundry detergent. Since I had some extra walking around money with me I decided to see if they had somehow stocked Rogue Galaxy yet. Well, lo and behold they had TEN (as far as I could tell since they were in a case) copies of Hotel Dusk.

I didn't buy it but I may tomorrow when I go to (maybe) scoop up Rogue Galaxy.
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Get Wild and Tough!

[aderack]

This game demonstrates even more potential than Trace Memory, and follows through on even less of it.

Frustrating!!

I noticed the Shenmue feeling as well, particularly in the bar. Speaking of unfulfilled potential.

[internisus]

yes, it's sadly true, but it's still an enjoyable story, don't you think?

[aderack]

Yeah. The characters are also pretty great. I just wish there was more to do!

Are the vending machine numbers the only things worth writing down? I believe I'm near the end, and... it seems so.

On the localization end, what's with the universal substitution of "trip" for "freak"? Feels like the same guy who did Phoenix Wright.

[skonrad]

I finally found it at Future Shop - but it was in hiding in storage for some reason.

I'm liking it but not loving it. I really wish this thing had a text skip button - I read about twice as fast as the text draws. It's ruining the pacing of the game for me.

[SuperWes]

The more I play of this the less I like it. It totally feels like I'm just going from text box to text box gathering more of the story. I hate that I'm spending most of my time trying to figure out what will trigger the next text box. I'll stick with it a bit more, but if this pace keeps up I don't think I'll be able to make it to the end without a FAQ, and if it comes to that what's the point?

-Wes
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[firenze]

[Rucio]

I like your comparison with a book, but there's something to this as well. With a book, you know exactly when the book ends. With Hotel Dusk, you can't know when it ends until the end.

Guys I just beat this game and I loved it.
_________________
"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[dmauro]

I made it through the first chapter. Am I ever going to do anything more than just advance text (slowly) or can I safely quit playing without feeling like I missed anything?
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[Rucio]

You are only going to advance text and solve like 18 puzzles and investigate areas. If you don't like it by now, then you probably won't like it ever. It's more book than game.

I love it though.
_________________
"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[skonrad]

I accidentally dropped a thing in an annoying puzzle and got a Game Over Screen. I didn't even know I could get a Game Over Screen in this game!! I haven't played it since.

Edit: I think this annoys me because I started to accept the idea of it being like a book -- however, if it is to be taken as a book, the construct of the game being over doesn't really make much sense. Especially because everything moves so slowly that getting back to the point I was at completely disinterests me.

[dmauro]

Thanks, Rucio. Good to know. I've got some better books to read in which the text advances as quickly as I could wish.
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[Rucio]

[google]

I was enjoying this game for about 2 hours.

Now I think its the most overrated piece of shit to come out of EGM in years!
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http://playerrant.blogspot.com/

[luvcraft]

wow, after these last few posts I'm really glad I didn't get it.
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[google]

[DaleNixon]

[skonrad]