It's pretty ironic that Dead Mountaineer's Hotel could have been an amazing, strong experience of a game. But sadly, with all its flaws in design, the inconsistencies as well as the missing finale, it feels like a missed opportunity. [March 2012]
We take a look on Strugatsky brother's videogame adaptation, Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, and interesting adventure that end up being a poorly told story, with an awkward gameplay and the feeling of not being finished a good example of how NOT to build a graphic adventure.
Underrated. Sure the story is horrible and abruptly ends right when it is actually just getting started. Basically, the scene is set (in like 5-8 hours), the initial mystery happens and not much more the 5 minutes of gameplay latter and in one conversation the story is told and concluded (even before the solution of the mystery has been hinted at). So the story is ridiculous and horrible but it contains some unique and interesting features. Mainly a real time system, many different optional things you can do, multiple endings, and a nice long and atmospheric scene setting intro.
What. The. Hell?? Starts off OK, looks decent and seems to be setting itself up to be an interesting mystery, the only complaint being weird pacing where you often need to go talk to everyone for no purpose other than to trigger the next **** then 4 hours in the game just ends out of nowhere with a ridiculous ending that had no connection to the events prior. Crazy.
Story aside, the graphics were good and the controls were generally solid. Voice acting varied greatly from the solid (main character) to the absurdly awful (Alex the hotel owner).
All up, I wouldn't recommend this at all as there's no many vastly superior options out there.
Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is almost a case study of what an adventure game shouldn't be, which is all the more unfortunate considering its immense potential.
Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is a point and click game. At this point I would normally attempt to explain what the game is all about, but alas, after having put hours into it I still do not have a clue. The protagonist is going on vacation at this mountain top hotel. He meets the owner and the other guests and in that process hears of a mountaineer who fell to his death years previously. There is supposedly a murder riddle somewhere in the game, but I've yet to see anything of it - whether the story of the mountaineer is connected or whether it was just clumsily included to give the hotel a cool name I know not. The closest thing to a criminal act I saw was when someone locked me in my room and I had to crawl out the window to find another way in.
In the lack of a riddle, a purpose, a goal or any form of measure of success, you find yourself playing something that's mostly akin to a budget-vacation simulator. As your character has no motivation for doing anything, the whole "pick up item for using it in riddle later" routine of every point-and-click adventure just becomes akin to theft since you really can't be planning to do anything but put the item on your mantlepiece.
There seems to be no obvious connections between the riddles and the plot. For instance I solved this riddle where I had to pick food from a buffet based on the other guests' choices. There was an obvious "success/failure" condition, but I could not for the life of me figure out why I should care about what the character eats. Why is it successful to eat pasta and not mashed potatoes, and how on Earth would this ever relate to a murder case?
Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is a pretty bad game in spite of the interesting theme (the supposed murder riddle with some hotel guests as suspects). The most fun I got out of buying it was writing this review.
Don't let the screen shots deceive you into buying this game, they look great. But the game is let down by awful forced voice acting with weird......... pauses, and horrendous out of place music. Monkey Island it ain't!
This game is a disgrace to computer gaming! Do NOT buy this game. Period.
I am in no mood explaining all the flaws. There are just too many. I stopped playing this game after an hour of annoyance.
I regret not having checked metacritics before buying...
Quite possibly one of the single worst games I've ever attempted to play. Its graphics (even for 2007) are pathetic (1024x768 resolution only,) it's interface is abominable (there are times the desired object only exists in a single clickable pixel), the voice acting is so painfully bad that I'm confident they hired passers-by on the street, and events on the screen are so utterly incomprehensible that there's no possibility of figuring out what's going on, or why you should even care. I couldn't even play far enough without the game breaking due to bugs to discover if there's any story or not.
Do not buy this game. I've yet to see a single positive review that isn't someone from their development team.
SummaryPlaying as a vacationing police detective traveling through a snowy mountain range, you are caught in an avalanche and seek shelter at a remote inn – Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. Upon your arrival everything appears normal. You meet the other hotel guests, talk about the stormy weather, have a drink, and take in the beautiful scenery... Qui...