Suffice to say I wasn't about to discover an unappreciated gem along comparable lines for either of Nintendo's contemporary consoles. They'd made games exclusively for Nintendo platforms since a solitary PS2 title in 2003, across the DS and Wii platforms. The developers, Fukuoka-based studio Cing Inc., went out of business in early 2010. So every time our hero sighed, cursed, and then got on with something other than what he really came here to do, I could totally relate.) The seemingly small, insignificant gesture of returning a mislaid jigsaw piece ultimately results in a sub-plot about a missing mother-who, wouldn't you know it, is mixed up in wider happenings in the hotel's rather shady history. Hyde wants to chase down his partner, long term but hallway conversations keep leading him towards into more pressing problems. So, I'll want to decorate a bedroom, or finally sort out these sagging record shelves but then a fence will blow down, or the shower explodes (which it did, right before Christmas). I always have a dozen and more jobs to do but often, when I'm close to getting started on one of them, something else happens, which requires urgent attention. (Brief aside: I also "enjoyed" how Hotel Dusk presented an unlikely parallel to my attempts to maintain a household. I sought out the makers of this peculiar adventure-a game that, until Chris's article, I'd never heard of, but now I'd sunk more time into than most triple-A big-hitters of 2016. Midway through the game-which, with schools-off family time taking up most of my waking hours, became my go-to bedtime entertainment for late December, perfectly suited as it is to bite-size sessions-I found my curiosity piqued beyond the confines of the fictional hotel. Watch Waypoint's short documentary on the making of 'SuperHyperCube' "Classic" point and click, then, albeit mercifully with no actual red herrings. Often, there's a very particular way to combine elements or objects, or very specific ways to conduct lines of inquiry and even when you know what you want to happen, achieving that result with the game's acquired taste UI isn't the easiest thing. There's a lot of backtracking as new leads present themselves, and sometimes overcoming problem-solving plotline obstacles can be infuriatingly obtuse. The game takes place entirely within the walls of the hotel, Hyde constantly conversing with both the staff and fellow guests. Hotel Dusk is a point-and-click affair in which you, as former police detective turned traveling salesman Kyle Hyde (a name that, throughout the game's 15 hours, constantly had "Born Slippy" rolling around my head), find yourself at a backwater California hotel at the beginning of a single, highly eventful night between Christmas and New Year, 1979. To this day, when I play a video game that tickles me in a way I wasn't anticipating, that offers something fresh, I immediately click to Wikipedia: who is behind this marvelous thing, and how do I get more of it? The most recent example of this process, from perusal to play to about-to-pay-for-more is Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a game coincidentally celebrating its tenth anniversary in January 2017. Not that I was necessarily playing everything these talents put out, at the time they came out but I was reading, absorbing, making a multitude of mental notes-and eventually, I'd visit all of these singularly styled virtual worlds. I don't think I began to consider the creators of these experiences until the final years of the PlayStation 2 era, and the beginning of generation seven: Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid sequels, Fumito Ueda's pairing of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and distinctive works from the likes of Goichi Suda and Keita Takahashi. Personally, in my teenage years, games were primarily playthings, brief distractions from college essay writing and driving lessons, alternatives to an evening sucking on a bottle in a nearby park with pals when money was tight.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |