"Hard-boiled looks but a softcore story"

On paper (and in screen-shots) Hotel Dusk seems brilliant. A graphic adventure with a gritty, crime thriller aesthetic and implementation of the DS unique features. I didn't see how it could be anything less than great. It was definitely one title I had been looking forward to since it was announced.

Unfortunately, while it ticks a lot of boxes, there's a real lack of soul, substance or momentum to its story and its style, making it come off as nothing more than sub-par, fan-fiction fodder.

The problems start as soon as you begin playing. After a nice intro you arrive at a hotel as an ex cop at the behest of some shadowy figure to search for some items. (Like I said, it sounds great on paper). The control system, however, is slow and cumbersome. You move around by dragging your character around with the stylus, which is - to use a bad pun - a real drag. You also need to tap doors constantly, navigate long winded menus, and the whole thing operates with a sluggish, long-winded pace. It takes a lot away from the adventure game experience when the control system isn't intuitive and obstructs the flow of the story.

While the graphics are detailed, and unique, Hotel Dusk suffers from the same problems as Cine's other adventure title, Trace Memory, in that the game area is extremely bland. Every room looks the same, textures look the same, and you are constantly traveling through the same places again and again and again. Its almost claustrophobic in its repetitiveness. My overbearing memory of the 10 or so hours in this game is the painfully slow tick of footsteps as I ambled from one area to the predictable next.

The most important part of an adventure is its story and characters, though, and despite boasting of a hard-boiled aesthetic, Hotel Dusk has a sappy, weak core. Karl Hyde may be an ex cop, but the investigations in this game involve a mother looking to reunite with her son, another mother who ran out on her family, a daughter suffering abandonment issues, and a kid mourning the loss of his friend. The trials and tribulations of these characters are geared towards fans of Ricki Lake, not Raymond Chandler. There's an annoying lack of commitment to its hard-boiled look, and an annoying amount of attempts to garner some gratuitous sentimentality at every opportunity. To put it in a crude way, this is hard-boiled fiction for girls who would rather be reading Japanese comics with pretty boys and love stories.

The dialog is decent for the most part, but the condescendingly repetitive reciting of events as they are further slow down what is an already slow game. The music is also cheesy, but I enjoyed it, and in places it is very good.

You can get by the clumsy controls, and forgive the bland surroundings eventually, and if you can tune into the soap opera storyline then you can easily amble through this game and get some enjoyment out of it, so long as you don't expect any puzzles. Hotel Dusk is almost completely devoid of them. Unless you regard using obvious items in obvious places, or performing stylus actions as puzzles, there are only a few instances you will actually need to use your brain, and one of those is a jigsaw.

Playing Hotel Dusk is a rather bland experience. It's as if everything about it has been toned down to daytime TV levels, from the soap opera plot, to the lack of any actual puzzles, to the generic, neutered dialog. It's a 3 dollar drama novel masquerading as a hard boiled adventure game.

Despite all its faults, Hotel Dusk is still enjoyable for a while, and even though it is nowhere near as engrossing or smart as Phoenix Wright, it is miles better than the dreadful Touch Detective and the short-as-a-demo Trace Memory. If you want hard-boiled detectives and an interesting plot though, you'd be better off with a book.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/22/07