It could have been so much better...
The gameplay got some problems. For the most part you're just using menus and clicking "next" to read more text, which is fine, but when you need to walk through the hotel it is another story. Nintendo DS's top screen is an first person view camera, and the touch screen is a map that you have to navigate with the stylus. It is a pain to look at one of the screens and control using the other, so the player end up by looking at the ugly map all the time. This wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't so much things that only appear in the first-person-view.
Another thing about the gameplay is about what you can do. Besides walking and talking to people, the main character Kyle Hyde can apparently interact with any object he wants.This would be great, but Hyde refuses to do what the player demands. About 99% of the combinations os objects you can do results in the same "wrong way" screen (Hyde says "Not going to get anywhere using this wright now"). Some times you have to solve a puzzle or scratch the stylus in the touch screen, which is as fun as it sounds.
The graphics looks cool for the first hour, but you will get sick of them after that. There is no color on the game. Hotel dusk is one of the ugliest places in earth. The characters sprites are neat and well animated, but they beg for colors.
As for the music, it is terrible. It feels like the same elevator music never stops. It is aways exciting when you hear something different in this game.
The major problem with this game is how linear it is. Everyone in the hotel disappear so that you have no options other than following the main storyline. Some events are triggered by walking aimlessly and others must be triggered by going to some random or obscure place. Most of the time the player have no clues and it's pretty hard to beat the game without an walkthrough by the side.
Hotel Dusk is not fun to hear, watch or play, but the excellent story keeps you in it. It gives just a bad experience and makes you wonder why such good storyline and characters were wasted this way.