2 Hour Review: Hotel Dusk

Here's the scenario: I'm a ex-detective turned traveling salesman. I'm moonlighting as a detective.

I get a list of things to find in a hotel: a magazine and a red box. I stumble into a room with someone I arrested from my past working at the hotel reading a magazine in a closet. What's are the first things I think to ask him? 1) Did you finish cleaning the hotel and 2) why did you lie to the cook about cleaning the hotel.

Jesus. Welcome to Hotel Dusk: stopping point for the detectively inept.

I love the controls of the game. I love the art style. I love all the text. I like all the characters that have stories to delve into. What I don't like are the half witted questions that my character, the ex-detective, finds interesting when talking to characters. When you're only interaction with characters in the game are by asking them questions based of of things they say (also scripted), you'd like the questions to be a little more probing. In fact, most of the pairs of questions you get to choose from are either the same are have little to do with the main story or even the character backgrounds. It's trying to hard to give user interaction when they should just script it and move on. I feel like the game is treating me like an 8-year-old and I doubt 8-year-olds have the patience to play a game like this.

So I moved on past it and got to solve my first "puzzle". I couldn't open my briefcase so I needed to find some wire to pick it. I found a paper-clip, but the wire wasn't thick enough. Then I found some tools to cut up a coat hanger. So when I tried to cut off a section as big as a the paper clip, it wasn't enough. I tired cutting off sections that were all bent up too, thinking I needed something to twist the lock with. But no. I needed a section of wire literally 5 times longer than the paper clip. Ahh..those big old meat hands of mine.

So after two hours, I feel a little underwhelmed. This game got about zero hype. No advertising in the store. Just a hunch from an IGN article and the opening to last weeks 1up Show; some guy giving the entire 1up staff crap for not playing Hotel Dusk on their DS(i?).

I'd have to walk over to him after these first two hours and demand an explanation. He'd better damn well offer up a "no, seriously, it gets better" or he might get smacked in the back of the head.