Hotel Dusk is a brilliant noir tale with colorful characters, a great script, and lots of variety.
The Bad: Often difficult to figure out where to go; some puzzles are too tricky for their own good; music can get irritating at times; more of an interactive novel than a game (which will turn many people off)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a unique title for the Nintendo DS that casts you as Kyle Hyde, an ex-cop who works as a traveling salesman. The story starts when Kyle is instructed to go to a place called Hotel Dusk to pick up a package for his job. He decides to stay the night, unaware of how long the night ahead of him is.
Kyle discovers right off the bat that things are a little strange at Hotel Dusk. First off, the concierge of the hotel recognizes his name because, apparently, somebody checked in several months before under the same name. Kyle is searching for his former police partner, Bradley, and he decides that the place has some connection to his friend.
The kind of crazy twists and turns the story takes are what makes Hotel Dusk such a rich and rewarding experience. It's told with an excellent noir flair and great scripting, which only helps to enrich the experience. By the end, you'll really feel a connection with each and every one of the characters, from the goofy bartender Louie to the troubled father and his daughter. There's so many great plotlines, and they all come together in authentically neat ways.
The way Hotel Dusk's gameplay works is the source of its biggest flaws. It's one of those games where you'll deal with the annoying gameplay just to get to the meat of the story and find out what happens next. For the most part, it's alright to just navigate around and do the occasional puzzle, but oftentimes these puzzles and wild goose chases are too much, and the gameplay starts to drag. There's nothing worse than getting stuck on a near-impossible puzzle just when you are at a key plot point in the game.
Flaws aside, Hotel Dusk is a great game that any DS owner with an interest in excellent fiction should check out. It may have worked better as a digital graphic novel or something similar, but what it is is an excellent piece of work that is easy to appreciate.