Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to review a CiNG game. In case you are a nerd like me, you probably saw that coming when you saw the title. The game I’m going to review is none other than Last Window: The Secret of Cape West – CiNG’s swan song, so to speak. And it’s one game that I’ve been looking forward to a lot – especially since we weren’t even sure if it would arrive outside Japan due to the company’s economical problems.
I really enjoyed Hotel Dusk: Room 215, like most people who played it. The film noir-inspired (gorgeous, might I add) art style and soundtrack, the dark but strangely uplifting storyline, the powerful characters and the extremely well-written dialogue made it one of my favorite DS games ever. In it, you played as Kyle Hyde – a bitter ex-cop who shot his partner 4 years ago after finding out the guy was working with a crime syndicate called Nile, and spent the following years as a businessman for the shady company Red Crown. He checked in at Hotel Dusk where he was pulled into a mystery connected to his past.
Last Window, again on the DS, takes place one year after the events of the first game – in other words, the early 1980s – and it starts with a flashback prologue showing a couple of incidents; first we see a thief getting shot after cracking a safe and finding a diamond, and then we see a woman being poisoned. In the present, Kyle is sleeping in his car after screwing up a job. He gets fired by his boss Ed, and retreats to Cape West, his apartment. In his room, he finds an anonymous letter that asks him to find the “Scarlet Star” in the apartment. One thing leads to another, and after a while he realizes that this might be related to his father’s murder. However, the apartment’s owner has decided to sell the place – so he only has a few days to find the truth.
Like the first game, you hold the DS sidewards – like a book. You walk around in the apartment looking for clues, solving puzzles and talking to people. The dialogue system work the same way as in Hotel Dusk – you choose what questions Kyle is going to ask, and must from time to time make choices. If you screw up a puzzle or make the wrong decision, you’ll get a short, humorous scenario followed by a Game Over screen – you better get used to seeing Kyle facepalming. The puzzles are much better than the ones in Hotel Dusk both in terms of quantity or quality – they make you think, sure, but not to the point where you get frustrated. And most of them use the DS functions such as the microphone in a clever way.
The game’s most notable new feature is the in-game novel, Last Window, written by a certain author that fans of Hotel Dusk might remember. The book is based on the events of this game and you unlock a new chapter every time you finish an in-game chapter. Your actions will influence the book’s script, and the book will be different depending on what decisions you make. The book also gives you some hints as to what to do next if you’re stuck.
While the puzzles are good, Last Window‘s strongest side is by far the storyline. The dialogue is top-notch and the characters are well-written and full of personality – sometimes you feel bad for them, sometimes you laugh at them. They all have some kind of thing that’s troubling them. The atmosphere is old-school – the characters are in black and white and the soundtrack is jazzy.
It’s a shame that this is CiNG’s last game, since they went bankrupt. Last Window is not the best DS game – that title goes to Dragon Quest IX – but it’s really close. Everything that made Hotel Dusk so great is present but it also improves things that Hotel Dusk could have done better. Overall, it’s recommended to anyone who fancies a good mystery.
Tags: another code, cing, filler tag, hotel dusk room 215, jonas, last window the secret of cape west, love apples, nintendo ds, review, tasha, trace memory
