|
Monday 14 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Hotel Dusk has failed to pick up. The game continues its molasses-like pace and shows absolutely no signs of nearing any event that would cause any sort of acceleration in the gameplay whatsoever. It has not improved in any way since the previous entry, and in fact has revealed strange new bits of gameplay that have in fact lowered my opinion of the game.
Hotel Dusk has continued in its habit of not teaching the player how to do things. Basic interface tasks, such as giving items to characters, making a person turn around, and using one item on another, are presented to the player and it is just assumed that they know what the designers intended them to do. For the most part it is relatively simple to figure out (assuming you are used to conventional game mechanics), but it can often get to the point of obscurity where you deduce the solution simply by scrawling randomly all over with the stylus.
The game is also frequently unclear as to what your objectives are or what you need to do to advance the plot. Probably the most annoying example of this was when I was put in the ridiculous situation of systematically knocking on every door in an attempt to find someone to engage in conversation so that I could go back to my room and have a package arrive. There is no indication whatsoever that the player needs to talk with the character before the package can arrive, and even less indication that the person is even able to be talked to. Situations like these make the game nigh unplayable.
Another odd gameplay portion appeared that managed to confuse and even insult me a bit. Apparently, at the end of every chapter, you are quizzed on the basic details of what occurred during said chapter. Do they assume that I am not paying attention? This portion was completely unexpected and really threw me off-kilter.
Finally, and perhaps above all else, the speed of this game and its plot is absolutely glacial. The player is tasked with the most menial of tasks that take positively forever to actually accomplish. The player arrives at the hotel at 5:00PM in the game, and at least three hours in, I have only managed to advance the in-game clock by forty minutes. The game is, in a single word, catatonic.
DESIGN
This game is SLOW. Normally in stories you have high points and low points, and this generally carries over to games as well. The changes in the pacing is important, as if it is always high-tension the player gets fatigued, and if it is always low-tension (as in this case) the player tends to get bored. The three hours of gameplay I experienced could be used as an example of how not to pace games and stories in general.
The art direction of the game, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. Everything has a sketch-y quality to it, with the characters literally being roughly animated sketches, and the environment fading out to a blank canvas in areas of no importance (the blank stretch of wall between a sitting area and a door, for example). The environment that is detailed maintains a hand-illustrated feel, with a painted feel to the areas with color. The art is one of my favorite parts of the game, and feels creative and fresh. Likewise, the characters are developed to a degree that is uncommon in games, and the conflicts that arise with them, as well as their responses, feel natural and believable. These two things are perhaps the only thing keeping me playing at this time, as the gameplay and plot certainly fail to provide incentive for continuing.
The game is largely based around conversation with characters, with the player doing a lot of passive dialogue absorption. Every so often you are allowed the honor of tapping a blinking button on the screen to "follow up" on something, which simply results in more text to read. You are also given the option to ask certain people about certain things, which while interesting from a character perspective is not particularly engaging nor fun. Very rarely do the choices of things to ask about hit on any really interesting or difficult choices, but every so often you have to give pause to honestly think about it.
Being on the DS, the game offers some interesting features as far as gameplay goes. The occasional puzzle requires you to interact directly with objects, moving things around and grabbing certain places. The DS also presents problems, however, as moving around in first-person is accomplished by moving a cursor around on an overhead map, which requires you to focus on that instead of the actual first-person view. There are also load times between menus, rooms, and views that are encountered often enough to significantly contribute to the slow pace of the game.
All in all, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a game with great writing and art direction that is made nigh-unplayable by the pacing, lack of proper instruction for the player, and lack of gameplay-based incentive for continuation of play.
|
