![]() ![]() Once you line them up, there’s that second where you think, “Now what?” Then the “Oh!” moment: I close the DS and open it again. The knob is on the touchscreen, the door on the other. What should I expect from a game that makes me hold it on its side like a book, making me consciously aware of the hardware I’m using? For example, one puzzle has you inserting a doorknob back into the door. That’s just the type of guy he is.Įvidence Last Window is actually trying, Part 2: Most of the puzzles, in the traditional adventure-game sense, rely on the unique capabilities of the Nintendo DS. Hyde has no reason to just carry one around, so he doesn’t. I have never, in my day-to-day life, carried a hammer around with me unless it was part of my job. As to the previous crime of not carrying the hammer in the first place, that’s a case of keeping in character. Let’s be upfront about this.” A frighteningly sensible argument that doesn’t insult my intelligence. What Cing does here is say, “Look, you’re not an idiot. That means that either developers of those games thought they would be challenging for me-they thought I was an idiot-or they thought they were legitimately difficult to figure out, which doesn’t bode well for their intelligence. “I know I’m going to need that hammer at some point!” When Kyle, later, mentions that he needs the hammer, I was angry because a) I told you so, and b) he had solved the “puzzle.” Then I thought: Would that have really been much of a puzzle? I started to realize that for years designers had been putting really obvious puzzles in these types of games to make me feel like I was doing something, when really I was stating the obvious, much like Hyde had done. This form of kleptomania is so ingrained in the genre that at first I found this really annoying. He’s close to getting fired, too, and he’s gotten a mysterious order to find the “Scarlet Star.” Again, reducing the game to its plot does it a disservice.Įvidence Last Window is actually trying, Part 1: Unlike 99 percent of all adventure games you can’t just randomly pick stuff up and carry it with you. It’s 1980 and Kyle is being evicted from his dingy bachelor apartment because the building’s been bought. ![]() In the sequel Last Window, you play Kyle Hyde a year after the events of Hotel Dusk. It’s what an adventure game should be, not what the genre currently wallows in. ![]() You’re in a motel in the middle of nowhere and you have to unravel this noir mystery and the puzzles are really interesting and neat and the characters are so well drawn, and the art style is like that A-Ha video for “Take on Me” and you should really try it.īut it’s so much more! It’s easy to see why Cing closed down, why they weren’t able to move more copies of their games: their games parallel existing genres, but to smooth off Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and call it an adventure game takes away a lot of what’s special about it. I want to say, “Have you played Hotel Dusk? For the DS?”Īnd in my head this strawman says, “No, what is it?”Īnd I tell them you play a washed-up salesman, who’s actually a detective for a company that specializes in finding things. It’s an impotent rage, where I mutter under my breath and whenever somebody writes another op-ed about The Sorry State of Modern Gaming, I almost bite my tongue clean through and think, “Jesus, where the hell are you looking?” I’m angry that Cing, its developer, is gone. ![]() Not because of the game: it is a game that tries, really genuinely tries. Playing Last Window : The Secret of Cape West makes me angry. ![]()
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