In these ways, the trappings of old-school adventure games are very much on display in Hotel Dusk (with a modern, DS-specific twist here and there).
Periodically you'll need to use certain collected items on hot spots in the environment or even use the DS itself to discover something hidden (for instance, closing the DS to flip an item from one side of the screen to the other to reveal a message on the back). When you find an area you want to search, you just tap around on highlighted items and investigate. For the most part, the gameplay is relatively uncomplicated. You lead Kyle around the map by tapping and dragging the stylus ahead of where you want him to go, and when you happen upon an item or person you want to examine, you simply tap an icon in the bottom left corner of the screen to make it happen. In Hotel Dusk, you hold the DS sideways at all times, using the D pad or face buttons (depending on your dexterity) to advance the cutscenes and using the touch screen for nearly everything else. He's tasked with finding a couple of left-behind items for a client but soon discovers that there's a greater, perhaps more sinister force at work within these walls-one that may lead him to his former partner's true fate. On this fateful night in 1979, Hyde's job takes him to the Hotel Dusk, a ramshackle flophouse in the middle of Southwestern nowhere. He's actually a door-to-door salesman, but his boss runs a little side venture, locating things for people who would rather not go to the police about such matters. A nagging suspicion that Bradley is still alive eats away at Hyde's soul, so he takes up a job as a hired investigator. Bradley's body is never recovered, and Hyde is booted off the force. Kyle catches up with Bradley on the docks near the Hudson River and shoots him, sending his body plummeting into the water. One night, Kyle gets a call that sends him chasing after Bradley (for reasons unbeknownst to the audience initially). Three years prior to the game's introduction, Hyde was an NYPD detective, working a case with his then partner, Brian Bradley. The salty, alcoholic ex-detective at the center of Hotel Dusk's tale (because it just wouldn't be proper noir without a boozing ex-cop at the helm) is Kyle Hyde. This is an engrossing piece of crime fiction that keeps its hooks in you the whole way through, and it's because of this that the slow pace and focus on dialogue over puzzles aren't just forgivable-they're actually preferable. This is hardly a dumb detective potboiler. This is less a game in some respects than a graphic novel with a number of interactive elements-and that's not a knock against it, either. The same types of unique puzzle-solving mechanics that originated in Trace Memory are found in Hotel Dusk, but the focus here is more on the game's gritty detective noir storyline. Cing is perhaps best known for 2005's Trace Memory, another DS adventure game and one of the more genuinely creative uses of the system's touch-screen technology. This is the premise of Nintendo and developer Cing's latest attempt at the adventure game genre on the DS. They are apparently unfamiliar with one another yet are seemingly bound together by one common trait-a dark secret of one sort or another. A variety of shady characters have taken up residence in this sleepy, Southwestern hotel a few days before New Year's Eve in 1979. Something fishy is going on at the Hotel Dusk.
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