hotel-dusk
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Full Hotel Dusk site now open
As the title indicates, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 has graduated from a minisite to the full treatment, complete with loads of new content just waiting to be discovered. If you need to slake your extreme thirst for this intriguing title until you can get your hands on it, this is the answer you're looking for.
DS Daily: The new book?
The adventure genre peaked in the early to mid 90's. And then it crashed. Hard. As it trudged along through the years, essentially dead but for rare gems like The Longest Journey, it slowly faded from the minds of modern gamers.The point-and-click capabilities of the DS have certainly given the once-zombified genre a much-needed jolt. We've seen excellent offerings, including the superlative Phoenix Wright series, the soon-to-be-released Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Trace Memory, Lost in Blue, and a few others (let's not even mention the ScummVM homebrew project). But the DS gives these games something they could have never had in the nineties: absolute portability. It's almost as though these games compete directly with the classic novel, something which has never really been seen even amongst the myriad of gadgets anyone can go out and readily purchase.Our question is this: how does a DS adventure game compare to that of a classic book? What would you rather whip out on the way to work? Phoenix Wright 2 has had our hearts and minds in a legal grip for days on end. You may not look as smart as those punks reading Vonnegut, but that's okay. You look cooler.
DS releases for the week of January 22nd
Can you guess what title we're excited about this week? It shouldn't be too hard, since we have made it more than a little obvious that we're gung ho for Hotel Dusk, which is also making its Japanese debut this week.DS releases: Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Inuyasha: Secret of the Divine Jewel For releases in other major markets, check after the jump.
Friday Video: Questions and answers
There has really been a flood of videos for Hotel Dusk this week, and so we figured it was only fitting that we bust out another for this week's featured video. If we were any more rabid for this game, it would be called Phoenix Wright. Check out a little gameplay footage after the jump!For anyone who's having trouble checking the video out here (we know there are sometimes issues with nonYouTube vids), just hit it up directly.
EGM so-so over Phoenix Wright, anoints Hotel Dusk
While we haven't seen it, word is that the upcoming issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly has some very interesting scores (and reviews) for a pair of upcoming DS titles. The March issue takes a look at both Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All and Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (it's long title month around here), and offers a lackluster-to-good range of scores for one, and great scores to the other ... and it's not the way that you may think.Word on the street forums is that the scores for the two games in the issue are as follows:Justice for All: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0Hotel Dusk: 8.0, 8.0, 10 (yeah, that's a ten)Now, it's true that this edition of Phoenix Wright is not judged to be the best by those who've played deeper into the series, and those are decent and respectable scores (which mean nothing, since we're all playing it anyway, and probably twice). But the scores for Hotel Dusk are surprising, and something of a relief as well. Whether or not you're a fan of EGM, it's nice to see such enthusiastic review scores. As a point of comparison, Trace Memory (often invoked when mentioning Hotel Dusk) scored much lower with EGM -- that game posted an average score of 6.17. [Via Go Nintendo]
2007: the year of the DS (again)
2006 was a banner year for gamers, particularly DS gamers. We've got it all: a rainbow of system colors, an incredible library of games, and powerful studios clamoring for a piece of the action. Our favorite handheld consistently rocked out, thundering over the competition -- all the competition -- for the entire year. The DS avalanche of awesome can't possibly continue at this rate ... and yet, when we look at the forthcoming year and the incredible parade of titles set for the year, it seems that the DS will, in fact, continue to dominate global gaming. And we're totally okay with that. Just so you know. If you're still scrambling to finish some of the titles from the latter half of 2006, play harder -- no matter who you are or what you like, you're sure to find at least ten games this year that are must-haves, and that's just among the games we know about right now. What's worse (or is that way, way better?) is that most of them are slated for the next few months. So run through Portrait of Ruin and put aside the hard rockin' Elite Beat Agents (your fingers will thank you for the break), and check after the jump for a few of the games that will drain your free time in 2007.
Hotel Dusk in the twilight of the year
It's been a great week for videos -- and now we get a peek at one of our most hotly anticipated titles, Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Unfortunately, it's not embedded here, so you'll have to go see it, but it's definitely worth a watch. Possibly even multiple watches. On the last Friday of the year, at Hotel Dusk, anything could happen ... but on this, the last Thursday of this year, we bring you the gift of video.
Less cool Hotel Dusk box
Reader KLind is looking forward to Hotel Dusk just as much as we are, and after we sighed over the Japanese boxart for the graphical adventure, KLind tipped us off to the box floating around various online retail outlets. We've used the image before ourselves, but hoped it was just a placeholder. Tragically, it looks like this is the real deal for the English language version. It may not be as slick and sinister as the Japanese version, but at least it shows off the look of the game. Still, we're sad.But we'll play it anyway.[Thanks, KLind!]
Possible Hotel Dusk boxart
We're not usually all about showing off the boxart. We're really not about showing off what could possibly-maybe be boxart from Korean sites we can't thoroughly translate. This one, however, is a little special. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (aka Wish Room) just has something, some nameless quality, that always seems to catch the eye, and the box is no exception. It looks more like a book or movie cover than a game -- which plays to the fact that the game's focus is the story. And that road trailing off in the distance is definitely a haunting image ... we're crossing our fingers that this is the actual box, and if so, we hope they keep it for release in other regions.
Hotel Dusk in stills
Famitsu featured a flood of screens from the mysterious Hotel Dusk: Room 215 yesterday, and all we can say is wow. If style was everything, this one would already be lining up for accolades. Let's just hope the unusual graphic adventure (set in 1979) is as good as it looks. We've seen a lot of these before, in video from the game, but it's nice to get to pore over some of the more interesting shots. Who knew a lone puzzle piece could look so sinister?
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 trailer brings the noir
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 caught some attention at E3, but since the spring we haven't seen or heard much about this upcoming adventure title. A new trailer surfaced at Nintendo World, however -- a trailer that features some of the same footage as the E3 trailer, but with double the content as it's twice as long.Hotel Dusk is an adventure story, a mystery that follows ex-cop Kyle Hyde as he tries to track down a missing friend. The beautiful art style is what really pushes this one into the spotlight; the game looks like a graphic novel come to life, and the fact that the DS is held as a book during gameplay only emphasizes the unique style. If Hotel Dusk is as good as it looks, our beloved Phoenix Wright may have some competition at the top of the heap of DS adventure games.Check out the new trailer after the jump.
