It took me by surprise when I found out that the first Wednesday after the summer of XBLA would have three releases instead of one. I was only surprised until I played them; only one of the three is worth looking at. In the never ending quest to charge money for things that are free (and possibly better) elsewhere comes Gin Rummy.
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COLUMNS
By Zvi Finklestein on August 8, 2007 in DS
Players: 1
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Cing Inc.
Genre: Adventure
Review By: Zvi Finklestein
“A gloomy yet beautiful work of art.”
Hotel Dusk: Room 215, the second DS adventure game developed by Cing in as many years, is a punk rock star. It’s a gloomy yet beautiful work of art that will grab any gamer (or non-gamer) by the groin and not let go until its story has been completed.
Hotel Dusk’s tale is told from a hotel off the highway in the desert in Nevada during the 1970s. The player character is an ex-cop turned traveling salesman/private eye named Kyle Hyde who manages to be terribly sarcastic, a pain in the ass, and wonderfully lovable. A dozen non-playable characters, including an old lady with an eye patch, a young mute woman, and a former criminal and friend of Hyde’s, have found their way to the hotel. They each have real character and an honestly fleshed-out back story, which weave themselves in and out of each other. Even all the women in the game, including the elderly woman when she was young, are good-looking. Needless to say, some suspended disbelief is in order to get through the game while still taking it seriously.
What makes this not only possible, but enjoyable, is the game’s writing. The localization team at Nintendo’s translation of the game from Japanese is in the upper echelon for video games, and the dialogue is the best in any game I have ever played. Like in a Hemingway short story, it’s amazingly organic and believable, and is really what will keep you interested. When talking to a character, Kyle will appear on one of the DS’s screens, and he or she will be on the other. Each person only has a handful of animations (happy, sad, angry, surprised, neutral), but they’re so subtle and realistic that it’s better than the fully animated characters of most games. During gameplay, the game’s characters (and during cutscenes, everything) have the rotoscoped look of a-ha’s music video for “Take on Me,” but it’s all hand drawn. It’s gorgeous and really brings the game to life.
Gameplay in Hotel Dusk consists of walking around the hotel talking to people (this works much like dialogue in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic but with more questioning and interrupting), and hunting for clues. You can interact with a pretty high percentage of the objects in the world, and Hyde has something to say about all of them (“a bathtub, looks clean enough”). This leads to relatively simple touch-screen based puzzles, like unwinding a paper clip and picking a lock with it, or lifting up a desk with a crowbar and taking a note hidden underneath. You have the freedom to go anywhere in the hotel, but the game is completely linear, and nothing you do affects the game’s story. The gameplay is entirely serviceable, but is crap compared to the other parts of the game that are done so well. You wouldn’t play through it without them.
By the extraordinary endgame, every part of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 fits together perfectly, and you’ll realize the game is about fate - the fate of many people coming together and working out their problems. And Hotel Dusk, one of the best DS games, has a lot to say about the potential fate of our gaming industry, when a game so great, and so unique, is still a niche title. Maybe if the gameplay in Cing’s next game isn’t secondary it‘ll do better. But until then, buy Hotel Dusk and get rocked.
“Steps Toward an Elitist Critic Future” at Rock Paper Shotgun
I went into this article expecting the “elitist critic future” to be presented as a negative thing, but no. Kieron Gillen is openly admitting here that he likes it. I think he’s buying into the idea that games need what you could call “indie cred” (not his words) to be worthwhile. I love Earth Defense Force 2017, but no, Kieron, it’s not better than Gears of War.
Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me.
“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.