The Isle Tide Hotel Review

The Isle Tide Hotel tells the story of Josh who needs to infiltrate the Isle Tide Hotel in order to rescue his daughter Eleanor Malone who was kidnapped and brought to the titular hotel ran by a Dr. Aniston. As our protagonist investigates and delves further into the establishment, he discovers that the hotel feels off. It’s only opened every three years for three nights welcoming a hosts of guests for a special event. Will you able to guide Josh in saving his daughter from the clutches of Dr. Aniston?

The Isle Tide Hotel is the latest entry in Wales Interactive’s portfolio of FMV, Full-motion video, gaming experiences. This genre doesn’t have proper gameplay per se; it’s basically players watching an interactive movie where they’ll be prompted to make a conversational choice before the time is up. Thankfully, if you don’t want to rush (or doing another replay), you can enable Streamer mode which will disable the timer for each decision making sequence giving you a chance to really think about which decision to make (or taking the time to remember which choice you’ve already made when on a previous run).

As the protagonist navigates the creepy hotel, you’ll encounter two types of rooms so to speak. Some areas will have you select which guest to engage in conversation with or other rooms will have you inspect a preset selection of interactive items that will unlock hints and clues as to how to find your daughter and also trying to figure out what is going on. When engaging with other characters, you’ll have a few choices to make during the conversation that will lead players down a certain path. On subsequent playthroughs, you will have to re-examine the same rooms and items, but depending on choices made, clues found may vary. You can however fast forward through hints you’ve already collected.

As this is an interactive movie, the presentation is spot on. The hotel is both majestic and slightly eerie. The actors are also doing solid performances from top to bottom. The protagonist really projects the idea of desperation to find his daughter while having an ominous feeling. The guests and employees of the hotel that interact with Josh each have their own unique personality, whether it be a quirky character bugging you about signing a petition for replacing a single word or the receptionist with an unnerving demeanor.

While not all is perfect, I’m happy to report that the editing for The Isle Tide Hotel is a huge improvement over Wales’ last few FMV ventures. The only little lingering nuisance here is that sometimes after making a decision, there’s a few seconds of silence/inactivity that feels like the game is trying to load the path you’ve taken. There are certain situations where interacting with certain characters will lead nowhere and won’t help you in your quest ending up being a waste of time. There’s also one path that will lead to an annoying maze where you’ll need to move through almost identical rooms and it’s incredibly frustrating/annoying.

Wales Interactive knocked it out the park once more. While I’ve enjoyed their previous FMVs, The Isle Tide Hotel is definitely one of their best work so far. Characters are likeable (others quite detestable), gripping story, unnerving ambiance and also improved editing work as there’s barely, if any, clipping issues when moving from one scene to another when making a choice. Despite its shortcomings, FMVs are a great investment, especially for completionists as there are hints and collectibles to find along with uncovering multiple endings. The Isle Tide Hotel is hands down one of my top gaming experiences of 2023. Don’t miss this one.