Dinonykos' Review of "The Dude In: Hotel California" (designed by Nol Drek)
What I really like about this design is the great idea to incorporate motives from the song "Hotel California" into a prequel to the Movie "The Big Lebowski". This is very originally done! The parts of the song are also used as background music during key scenes, which gives a nice atmosphere. The movie feeling is furthermore supported by using screencaps from the movie to depict characters. The story is well-told, too. A particular good aspect are the funny combat icons.
Some drawbacks of the version I played are highly inconsistent graphics, particularly in the 3-d-window. Perhaps Nol should consider updating the walls and backgrounds once there is more fitting art available. I also had problems with the combats, but, as I was told by Nol when discussing his design, this was partly because I overlooked functions of certain items - so check out which functions the different items have, you may get an even nicer game experience! Still, I was able to finish the design and was rewarded with funny and entertaining events and encounters.
Therefore, while I was not completely convinced by the looks of this design and think there are several things that could be improved, I definitely recommend it to everybody because of the original and inspiring main idea, good story telling, original combats, and the great general feeling the design gives. I definitely had a lot of fun playing it!
I could imagine that for those who like "The Big Lebowski", it might be a special experience to play this and watch the movie afterwards...
