Cult Classic: To this day, this game along with Last Window gained a lot of fans.
Hotel Dusk contains examples of:
Magnificent Bastard: Brian Bradley betrayed the NYPD to work for the crime syndicate, NILE, after they kidnapped his sister. Deciding to betray NILE after he feels sympathy for a man whose daughter they kidnapped, Bradley murders one of his criminal associates and steals the "Angel Opening the Door" painting from them.Surviving being shot by his former NYPD partner, Kyle Hyde, who discovers his criminal ties, Bradley goes to Hotel Dusk, where he leaves clues for Kyle to track him down. When Kyle solves the mystery Bradley left for him, Bradley cordially bids him farewell through a letter, already long gone and continuing to chase the NILE members who killed his sister.
"I've got myself a paper clip."Explanation For whatever reason, the paper clip is jokingly referred to as the single most important item in the game, with this quote becoming memetic because of it.
"Get Out!"Explanation This phrase or a variation of it is frequently used to make fun of Dunning's tendency to kick Kyle out of the hotel over the slightest transgressions.
Nightmare Fuel: The game slips into a darker territory towards the end of chapter 9 when Kyle finds Louie lying on the ground in the hotel's wine cellar and when he gets closer, a figure with a sack over his head sneaks up behind him and hits him in the back of his head with a bottle. A bit later, Kyle, Louie and Rosa find out that the hotel has a secret basement, which is quite eerie by itself, but when Kyle investigates a room in it, he suddenly hears footsteps and the door shutting behind him, leaving him in an airtight room with no one close enough to hear him hitting the door. If you don't solve the room's puzzle in time, which youprobably won't, Kyle dies of suffocation. Thankfully his confrontation with Dunning afterwards implies the latter didn't know Kyle was there.
Paranoia Fuel: By around Chapter 2 or 3, you will be worried about running into/getting kicked out by Dunning everywhere.
At one point the game over music plays but the player won't get a game over. This happens when playing the Side A of Iris' tape.
At another point Dunning catches Kyle investigating his room. The usual dialogue before getting a game over happens but the usual music doesn't play. Turns out it's required and doesn't give an actual game over.
Scrappy Mechanic: Interrogations. Giving a wrong response can cause the player to fail the sequence, but even if they know what they said was wrong, the only way to quickly restart would be to soft reset the game with L + R + Start + Select. Of course, starting again also means skipping over large amounts of already-read text. The player is also not allowed to save the game during these moments.
The Woobie: Mila. Oh God, Mila. Witnesses her friend get kidnapped by a complete stranger at the age of nine, brutally struck by said person and put into a coma, wakes up ten years later as a mute, searches for her father for six months with no sense of direction, and passes out again in the same room where her friend was kidnapped this time losing her breath and narrowly pulled back from the edge. And for all of her trouble, what does she learn? That her father may have been killed by Kyle's partner in the heat of rage when he came to visit her, as revenge for killing his own sister whose name was also Mila. Poor girl. For all of the crap she went through, there's no argument that she deserved a happy ending, either with Kyle or Rosa.
By contrast, most of Kyle's deadpan snarking were Lost in Translation to the French version, in which the furniture-clicking comments are even more generic and boring; however, it has Louie call Melissa by the cutesy nickname "Meli-Melo" as he picks her up to carry her back to her room, making the already heartwarming scene just unbearably adorable.
was good in Hotel Dusk? Try the jazzy remix from Last Window