Update: Okay, so it seems I spoke too soon. Turns out Hotel Dusk does have a setting for left-handed folk, which essentially negates my entire argument. Oh well. I’ll leave this post here for posterity.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the Nintendo DS sure sounds awesome, but the unique way you hold the system could potentially alienate left-handed gamers (comme moi) from the game. When playing Hotel Dusk, it seems that players must hold the DS vertically, like a book, with the touch screen on the right and non-touch on the left.
Unless the game has an option to invert the two screens (allowing the touch screen to be on the left), it’s going to be hella awkward for lefties, who’ll have to hold the stylus in their less-dominant claw in order to play.
I’d be okay with this if it hadn’t already been a nagging problem. In fact, the last two DS games I’ve played have had similar issues. The Sisters mode of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin requires players to have one hand on the d-pad and one on the stylus at all times, forcing me to play rightie. All they had to do was add an option to use the four face buttons as an alternate d-pad, and the problem would have been solved (an especially heinous oversight considering that the face buttons aren’t even used in this mode of play).
Same issue in Animal Crossing: Wild World. While the stylus and face buttons can both be used to control all aspects of the game, it’s much easier to switch off between the two, moving your character around with the d-pad, and navigating menus with the stylus. This natural style of play, however, is not easily accomplished by lefties, who have to either commit to right-hand stylusing, or constantly switch between holding the stylus and holding the d-pad. Again, a minor gripe, but one that could have easily been fixed by swapping the functions of the d-pad and face buttons.
Even if Hotel Dusk lacks a southpaw mode, I’ll admittedly still buy it, but I’m getting a little tired of designers failing to consider these issues when creating their interfaces. Innovative controls are a hot trend in video games these days, but it’s all a wash if accessibility doesn’t evolve with the rest of the market.