I was really excited to check out Hotel Dusk. After watching a friend play it, I was intrigued by the art style. The box described the game as an "interactive mystery novel" and, unfortunately, they take the "novel" part quite seriously.

As an avid RPG fan, I'm no stranger to large blocks of text and dialogue. In fact, narrative is one of my favorite parts of RPGs. However, narrative at the expense of gameplay throws a game far out of balance. Hotel Dusk does just that. The game is weighed down by long conversations that offer only a few choices with seemingly little influence on the world. Most of the gameplay involved clicking through rooms, tedious searching of rooms, and looking for the person that would start my next lengthy dialogue.

On the rare occassion when I got to solve a puzzle, I often had trouble recognizing the situation. I often had to look online for help, as I was completely stuck. How was I to know that a utility closet which was locked the last four times I checked suddenly opened? And how was I supposed to know that there was a tool in that closet that I could use to cut off a length of a coat hanger firmly rooted to my closet? And then I was magically supposed to assume that I could use this to unlock a briefcase. The puzzles are mostly like the one I described - intensely elaborate and complicated. The people around were clueless to my problems and failed to offer any hints. Puzzle solving became a tedious endeavor in which I had to search through every room in the hotel again, engage each person in repetitive dialogues, and wonder why the logical answers never seem to be the right ones.

I really wanted to like this game, as it had a gorgeous art style and an interesting premise. However, this game is much more a novel than a game, and a boring novel at that. If solving mysteries in real life is this tedious, then perhaps it's good I'm not a detective.