Finally fished Last Window yesterday evening. Guess I'll do a review for it...
2007's Hotel Dusk took me by surprise. To not mince words, it was the best adventure game I'd ever played. Almost every aspect was magnificent; the consistent noir atmosphere, the jazz soundtrack, the twisty-turny plot, clever puzzles, riveting dialogue, and wholly believable three dimensional characters... it all added up to a masterpiece of interactive entertainment that anyone with a DS missed at their detriment. After completing it, I bought a Hotel Dusk poster and put it up in my gaming room to remind me always what games can really be if they try. And that is, true art.
Flash forward three years later, in 2010 Cing's final gift to the world of gaming is a sequel to Hotel Dusk entitled Last Window. It is a wonderful and much appreciated gift. Initially I am sad to say Last Window doesn't best its predecessor. That said, this sequel remains a fine game on its own merits, easily one of the best releases on the DS. Being a sequel however, one must judge this game against the one before it, so let's break things down in that sense, shall we? Spoiler free of course.
I am going to assume in this review that the reader is familiar with the base concept of the original game, Hotel Dusk. If not, feel free to familiarize yourself.
Graphics
Last Window uses the same engine as Hotel Dusk, although slightly more optimized. Instead of 30 frames a second, the 3D world now moves at 60. Everything 3D in the game moves nice and smooth, with nary a hiccup in frame rate. The three dimensional environments look every bit as detailed as the original game's, if not more so. The color tones for all the textures remains sepia, which lends to the noir atmosphere Cing obviously was targeting. All in all, this 3D isn't necessarily the most impressive on the DS, but there's nothing shabby about it. The hallmark 2D Take On Me rotoscoped animation style of the characters returns, although this time with slightly more detail, and an increased amount of animation frames. Once again, this unique method of bringing the characters to life makes all the difference in the world to make them believable as real human beings. Overall, the return of 3D noir atmosphere along with the character animation looks even better this time around, everything graphically works brilliantly.
Audio
All of the menu sound effects in Last Window are ripped directly from Hotel Dusk, so no change there. That didn't really bother me, it kept a consistent feel. There are of course new sound effects in the game concerning events, and they are all digitally recorded real world sounds... so that works just fine. From a music perspective, Last Window impresses and disappointments simultaneously. The jazz genre returns in this game as the former, nothing wrong with that. Hearing a little sax and lower octave piano fits the mood of this game just fine. What is impressive is the sheer amount of musical tracks in the game, over 55 of them! All are accessible (once heard initially) from a jukebox within the game's world itself. (A nice feature is that if you play a tune on the jukebox, you can close the DS and continue to listen to it through the headphone port.) What is disappointing however, is that the actual quality of the compositions generally speaking isn't as strong as it was in Hotel Dusk. There are of course some truly stellar tunes, but quite a few of the others come across a little too close to elevator music. Overall though, Last Window is no slouch in the audio department, competent sound effects and above average music.
Control
The sequel's interface closely resembles that of the original game, with a few improvements. The most important being that in Hotel Dusk, many of the icons you dealt with while traversing the game world were scattered about the top of the game screen. In Last Window, they are neatly organized and packed at the bottom of the screen, a useful change. You still hold the DS sideways, like a book, which doesn't bother me in the slightest, and makes sense concerning the presentation. The menu design is spartan and well organized, navigating the game world is a breeze, dialogue control is no problem... I can think of no complaints in the controls department, and mainly it's slightly improved from the original.
Well so far everything in Last Window is just fine, even slightly better in ways than Hotel Dusk, but now... now we must get to the meat of the adventure game experience... the story and puzzles... and that aspect I'm afraid, doesn't fair quite as well as the first.
Story
Ah! I must traipse carefully here, nobody likes spoilers in a review (I bloody hate them truly). Let's say the story in Last Window picks up well from where the last game left off. Also the first chapter does a good job of introducing a new player to the world of Kyle Hyde had they missed the first entry. Now let me see how I can get into this without exposing anything... okay. I did not enjoy at all the plot of Last Window as much as I did Hotel Dusk. The reasons why are a few... number one, I guessed nearly every "twist" of the game before it happened, I simply could see story expositions coming a mile away. I correctly guessed the motives of a few characters who's intentions were supposed to be initially ulterior. What I'm saying is that Last Window didn't do a very good job of consistently surprising me like Hotel Dusk did. The overall story was much simpler and shallower. One aspect that really impressed me about Hotel Dusk's story was that every character in the hotel was somehow involved in the main plot. Well, unfortunately, that is not the case in Last Window... there are quite a few characters who come across as undeveloped fluff. This made it more difficult to become attached to most of the characters. When I finished Hotel Dusk, I was sad to know I would have no more conversations with the people I was leaving behind. In Last Window, upon finishing the game, the only person I found myself missing was Kyle himself. That says volumes about the lack of true charm in the characters of the sequel. While I found the story entertaining at times in Last Window, it aggravated me that the nemesis of Kyle Hyde's life was never touched upon. The whole reason Kyle joined Red Crown in the first place... to track down his ex-partner Bradley. Well don't take this as a spoiler, but as a warning; if you want to play Last Window in the hopes of ending things with Bradley, forget it. The man is hardly mentioned here. Perhaps Cing was wanting to save that aspect for the final game, making a trilogy of it all. I will say though, that a few of the original Hotel Dusk characters do return in Last Window, for the better. I won't ruin who they are of course. Overall, the story in Last Window is far and away better than almost any other game out there... but compared to the almighty Hotel Dusk, it misses the water mark.
Puzzles
The original Hotel Dusk's puzzles were very special in the way that they utilized the control features of the DS. Often they were clever in their design, and surprising in their innovation. Lastly, those puzzles were often real brain teasers. Well, on a positive note, Cing does a wonderful job of bringing back the highly interactive style of the original game's puzzles. On a negative note unfortunately, almost every puzzle you come across is brain-dead-simple. There was only one puzzle of dozens in the entire game which I was stumped on... and it had nothing to do with the puzzle itself, but rather the real world mechanical operation of a piece of very antiquated audio equipment. However, I am convinced that what failed me in that puzzle mainly was a badly translated comment by Kyle. Had he said something a bit more pertinent to what he was hearing, all would have been well... what he says instead makes no sense and only further complicates the situation. Well, it's hard to explain without ruining anything. Anyway, almost unifiably, the puzzles in Last Window are super easy for anyone who's played adventure games in the past. There's one puzzle in the last chapter of the game which will probably blow the minds of casual gamers... but I doubt casual gamers would even play this game or ever get that far. I will say in conclusion that the overall puzzle designs in Last Window from an interactivity standpoint, and relevance to the story, are well thought out and executed... I was just disappointed with their lack of difficulty. It is worth mentioning though, impressively, many of the puzzles have alternative solutions.
Game Design
Last Window's game design is quite similar to Hotel Dusk's, that makes sense. But what is vastly different is just how incredibly linear this sequel is in comparison. Hardly ever are you in a situation where you feel in control of some sort of variance in the flow of things. Almost always you are being lead on a tangible leash based on what Kyle says it's time to do. Kyle sets the agenda for almost every moment of the experience, as he is constantly dictating what he thinks he should do next... and should you attempt to do anything else, you are never rewarded with bonus hidden situations or elements... but rather, you will find empty rooms devoid of conversations or entertaining red herrings of any sort. I think this radical change of the design was Cing's knee-jerk reaction to so many people complaining about being stuck wandering aimlessly in Hotel Dusk. I won't lie, that happened to me a few times in the original, yet I found being lead around like a dog on a leash in Last Window to be more annoying in comparison. It also makes the game that much more easy... which combined with the simple puzzles really serves to eviscerate the challenge of the experience. To put it simply, Last Window is vastly easier than Hotel Dusk in many regards. Unfortunately, I found the lack of difficulty to be a bit of a detriment rather than a boon. I guess Cing did this in hopes of capturing a bit more of the casual gamer crowd. I find that to be silly, as someone who's into Nintendogs or Cooking Mama would hardly be interested in a title like this anyway I'd think. Rather the true challenge of Last Window simply lies in getting through all of the dialogue. You will be literally reading a novel's worth of text by the time you're through. Ironically enough, a bonus you get upon finishing a chapter in the game, is the reveal of a chapter within an in-game book of all things which summarizes the experience as you play... should you wish to read even more.
A sticking nasty point
There is another major difference between Last Window and its predecessor, and that is seemingly silly, and quite arbitrary "game overs". I got a game over screen in Last Window ten times as much as in Hotel Dusk. Don't take that as some sort of challenging aspect though, as the game overs are always because a conversation went wrong (usually without any warning) with a character in the game, and suddenly Kyle decides he can't hack it and leaves the apartment complex. Almost universally the game overs you get based on this seem nearly random, and absolutely contrived. I found that aspect to be amusing at first, but extremely annoying later on. The annoyance comes from finishing a conversation with a character which takes in real time nearly ten minutes, only to get a game over at the end of it, and be forced to have the entire conversation over again until you can change whatever conversational decision it was which caused the game over. This annoyance is exacerbated by the fact there's no way to skip dialogue.
Conclusion
On the whole, as its own game, Last Window is a fine entry worthy of any adventure lover's time. It is far and away above average, and is easily one of the best adventure titles ever made. This is a game made by adults for adults. A truly mature game that is mature in its themes and story, rather then gore and nudity. But unfortunately, Last Window simply isn't a better game than Hotel Dusk. Ultimately, it's not even laterally as good. I couldn't shake the feeling that Cing wanted to do more with this game, wanted to flesh it out further, develop the characters deeper, and throw in a few more complex puzzles... but likely ran out of time. The developers were already verging on insolvency during the creation of this title, and more than likely, their publisher was putting the pressure on to just churn it out. I like to think that was the case, and in that situation, Cing made a wonderful game and didn't drop the ball... even if the shot they made wasn't a slam dunk. A sequel that feels more like an encore, that's an apt description of this experience. But Kyle Hyde is a man well worth clapping for a second time.
Lastly, I'd like to say, the people who were at Cing are creative geniuses, and a true boon to the art of game development. I put them in the same class as Looking Glass, and that says a helluva lot. You will be missed, once and future kings.
tl;dr mode
Last Window score: 8/10
Finished playtime: 19 hours
+Great graphics
+Good music
+Decent story
+Competent controls
+Enjoyable plot
-Brain dead puzzles
-Brutally linear
-Character development limited
-Guessable "twists"
-Ridiculous game overs
