Plot in a computer game is like plot in a porn film: there to be skipped over. You don’t need to know why your on-screen alter-ego is on a bloody killing spree, or rolling around a hilly landscape trying to collect spinning gold rings: he just is.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215, which launches on the handheld console the Nintendo DS tomorrow, is different. In this game, plot is everything. So much so, that Nintendo are not even calling it a game: it is instead “the first fully interactive novel”. But if it’s interactive, can it still be called a novel? And, more importantly, can a glorified Game Boy really rival the nuanced storytelling of a good book?

Visually, Hotel Dusk is very stylish indeed. It opens with a prologue played out on the console’s dual screen (you hold the DS vertically, which, apparently adds “to the literary feel”), in which meticulously drawn anime-style city-scapes fade into each other and you are introduced to the protagonist, a young chiselled man with a goatee, strikingly realised in scratchy pencil-lines (the whole man, that is, not just the goatee, although that does look particularly scratchy).

He is Kyle Hyde, a New York cop who, after a traumatic incident in which his partner Bradley vanishes, leaves the force to become a door-to-door salesman for a decidedly dodgy company called Red Crown. One day in 1979 Hyde is sent to pick up a package from a hotel in the Nevada desert. As he rolls up at Hotel Dusk, the game proper begins. You control Karl, and as he explores the hotel, it quickly becomes apparent that your object is not just to pick up the package (that would presumably be a shorter game and mainly useful for prospective DHL employees), but to unravel the mystery of Bradley’s disappearance.

That sounds like it could be a reasonable opening for a detective novel. Were it not, that is, for the horribly clunky dialogue, which reads like an unfunny Raymond Chandler parody: “My head’s pounding like a marching band caught in a stampede,” says Hyde, referring to his obligatory antihero’s hangover. The laboured prose in itself would be bearable if you could actually, as in a novel, read it at your own pace. Instead it blips across the screen at a frustratingly slow speed, perhaps aimed at those more accustomed to the 160 characters of a text-message.

And if this is a “fully interactive” novel, then surely you should be able to control what Hyde says? Well, once you’ve sat through reams of pre-ordained chit-chat, you can choose between a couple of different questions to ask, which might change the course of the conversation. But even then, you’re stuck with Hyde’s leaden tongue: “Talk about the trouble you mentioned earlier” is not exactly how I would choose to frame my subtle, casual interrogation.

A good novel creates its own world: be it an English seaside town in 1962 or a faceless fast-food restaurant in 2200. Hotel Dusk does look like a pretty convincing 1970s hotel, and the plinky jazz soundtrack adds to the atmosphere (if only for the first 10 minutes – after which you will almost certainly turn it off). But, especially once you’ve met a few of the two-dimensional guests, it soons becomes clear that it doesn’t even approach the richness or intricacy that you’d demand from a novel. And as for that “fully interactive” business: Hyde can only interact with the few bits of the hotel that the programmers have decided he should. And let me tell you, the pleasure in opening and closing doors is pretty limited.

Hyde’s interior monologue is not much help. As you approach a desk with a single paper-clip on it (you’re looking for something to pick a lock with, so that’s lucky), Hyde observes, “A paper-clip, huh?” As you pick it up, he adds, “Gotta hang onto this, might come in handy”. And as you put it away, he concludes smugly, “I got myself a paper-clip.” If there was a way I could have used that paperclip to stab myself (ie Hyde) to death at that moment, I would have done so.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t get far with Hotel Dusk: I’m sure it gets more complex and intriguing as it goes on. Also, I’m not a professional games reviewer, and some of them found it very good indeed. But one thing’s for certain: this “fully interactive novel” does not do exactly what it says on the tin.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 retails at around £30

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