Last Window: Midnight Promise

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Last Window: Midnight Promise

 

Genre: Adventure

Developer: Cing Inc.

Release Date: September 17, 2010

Exclusively on: Nintendo DS

 

The DS title is a new sequel in a familiar series. Nintendo and CING are teaming up for another adventure game. Titled Last Window: Midnight Promise, the new game is a sequel to Hotel Dusk: Room 215. The story kicks off one year after the events of the original. DS owners can look forward to another story-driven adventure

 

CiNG is returning to the traditional gumshoe beat of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 with its sequel, Last Window. Kyle Hyde is back, in LA, in an apartment block full of crazies, in his crumpled raincoat.

 

Much is as it was when we last met Hyde, including his raging egomania and pigheadedness. It's a relief that, despite Hotel Dusk's niche appeal, we still have a protagonist with depth and flaws, like a silly goatee that clashes with his 50-year-old dress sense and utter lack of ironing skills.

 

The driving force behind Hotel Dusk was its thoughtful, clever story. By turns comical and melancholy, it threw several spools of narrative to the floor and invited you to systematically untangle them by solving a series of puzzles. At the moment, the bulk of Last Window's story is a closed book. All we can tell you is that, despite being a new episode and not linked to the thrust of Hotel Dusk, players of the original will be comfortable in Last Window's surroundings. We rejoin the former cop Hyde a year after the events of Hotel Dusk, in Los Angeles in 1980.

After leaving the LAPD following the presumed shooting of his former partner, Hyde became a salesman with the Red Crown company, indulging in a bit of snooping around on the side. Last Window kicks off with Hyde being awoken in his car by his buzzing pager, informing him he's been given the sack. To compound matters he's been given the boot from his flat as well.

 

Later that day he receives a puzzling message telling him to keep an eye out for the Red Star in the old Cape West Hotel on the other side of town. So he packs, heads over there and checks in.

 

The wait for a new CiNG game always throws up loads of questions about what lies in store. A policy of saying the bare minimum until the game is upon us works wonders in these instances, tightening the anticipation and helping the detective in us by polishing our mental magnifying glass. Is the Red Star related to the invitation Hyde finds to an old farewell party for the original Cape West? Who is the shadowy figure known only as Rex, asking lots of questions about Hyde? Why are Hyde's parents, Chris and Jeannie, so involved in this particular episode of their son's life? And, of course, what part will the disparate residents of the shambling LA hotel have to play in unravelling the plot?

There's great emphasis on the wisdom of your questioning technique. If you blunder around the hotel bothering your neighbours with too many inane questions you'll not only lead yourself up the garden path, but you'll also find yourself being marched out the door, suitcase in hand. Game Over hangs heavy over your investigation, just as it did in Hotel Dusk before it, so you must tread carefully with your fellow residents, like the widow Marie Rivet, alone and understandably highly strung since her husband and brother died in an accident. Tetchy Frank Raver, too, is usually found pacing the hall, but he's not amenable to your probing and is always likely to sound off to landlady Margaret Patrice about you. You'll pick up a lot in overheard conversations, but you'll need to make liberal use of the new Ignore function to progress. Gossip could be genuine, or they could be idle banter - it must be filtered by ignoring it if you think necessary. That said, there's always the danger of turning a dear ear to too much, and you'll be stopped in your tracks if the game thinks that's the case.

 

As for the title, those of you who played Hotel Dusk will remember Martin Summer, the author with rather high self-regard. He's written a novel called The Last Window, which you dip into as you solve more of the game's riddles. With every checkpoint you make it to, you access another chapter. It's a useful means of putting Hyde's circumstances into context and getting some background to the Cape West, further fleshing out Last Window's sense of place.

 

The downside to all this is that such dense dialogue needs to be translated into English. The game is out now in Japan, but a European release hasn't even been whispered about yet. We'll get it, don't worry about that. It's too Western in its influences and appeal not to be.

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[Bourdoulas]

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