Hotel Dusk: Room 215 -- Stylish Control.

You hold the Nintendo DS sideways like a book when playing Hotel Dusk. When you first start the game you're asked to set the orientation of the system based on if you're left or right-handed. I'm left-handed so I hold the NDS in my right hand with the touch screen on the left for easy access. The game is entirely controlled by the stylus. The game has a couple of perspectives. When exploring you'll see a map of the hotel on the touch screen and the character's view on the other screen. You move the character around by touching where you want the character go. You essentially lead him around like old PC games where you'd click with the mouse and the character followed there. It's the same deal here with touch. Your character is represented by a circle with an arrow sticking out of it so you can easily determine the direction you're facing. On the touch screen there is a head's up display across the bottom whenever you're in the mode where you can move. The icons are a door, a silhouette, a magnifying glass, and a notebook. The door allows you to interact with a door directly in front of you. The silhouette allows you to talk to someone in front of you. The magnifying glass allows you to search the area in front of you. These icons don't have any use until they're highlighted, normally by being near enough and facing the correct direction to whatever you can interact with. When you search an area the game's perspective shifts to the character's view on the touch screen. A new icon appears here, the bag. The bag contains the items you've collected that might have a potential use. Also on the search screen is a slider that allows you to swing the view to the left and right. As an example, this allows you to see a note stuck to the side of a television that you wouldn't have seen with the view being head on. You can use the stylus in the search mode to get a description for just about anything in the view just by double-tapping whatever it might be. As you search you'll locate puzzles. The view will focus in on the puzzle and most of the puzzles in the game will make use of some sort of touch action. The notebook allows you to access the options menu for saving, check the character and item logs, check or write a memo, check the overall map, and access the story summary. The memo feature is especially cool. It's just a notebook where you can write yourselfnotes withthe stylus to be saved within the game. It's crucial for some of the puzzles. When you initiate a conversation the view shifts again to show the player character on the touch screen and whoever he's talking to in the other screen. The game sticks to standard conversation trees. You're able to ask specific questions in specific situations. You can't ask whatever you might want to ask whenever to just anyone. You're offered a choice between a couple of possible questions or comments when talking to people. The game does allow for you to end the game by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person so you do need to exercise some caution. The game's controls work perfectly well enough. They never get in the way. They don't come off as gimmicky. You're going to be spending most of you time just tapping the screen anyway to advance the text. So the control works, but what of the puzzles and the story? Next time...