The Nintendo DS has enjoyed a wide variety of game genres, however with the exception of Touch the Dead and Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, survival horror hasn’t really been one of them. Enter Dementium: The Ward, one of the creepiest and most technically impressive games released on Nintendo’s diminutive platform. This game provides some of the smoothest first person gameplay available on the DS, which makes the repetitive enemies and horrible save system all the more disappointing.
The game opens with you being abruptly wheeled into a room in what can only be described as the worst hospital ever. The lights are out, there’s blood on the wall, and worst of all, there’s no pudding. Once the cut scene ends you’re left to take stock of your situation with nothing but a cryptic note on the floor to give you any indication as to what’s going on. Unfortunately things don’t get much clearer, or much better once you leave the room as it appears that the hospital has been home to some very bad things, and other than the cries of unknown horrors off in the distance, everyone else has checked out.
The game uses the familiar FPS control scheme we’ve all come to know and love on the DS, with the touchscreen used for looking around, the d-pad for moving forward, back and strafing, and the left shoulder button for firing. The right shoulder button is used for switching between two weapons, or a flashlight and another weapon. It appears that you’ve been admitted to the hospital to cure you of whatever affliction keeps you from being able to use a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other, which means you’ll be doing a lot of switching back and forth between guns and your torch. Even the most dexterous of gamers will have a hard time managing the controls and hitting a shoulder button to switch between items, which makes the item switching somewhat of a chore.
As annoying as the flashlight gimmick is, you soon learn to deal with it, and its limited usage works wonders in keeping up the creepy, claustrophobic feel of the abandoned hospital. Coming across an enemy and quickly switching off your flashlight before they see you means that not only can’t they see you, but you can’t shoot them either which leads to plenty of tense moments where you’re waiting, firearm at the ready, for some horror to come shambling out of the dark after you. The flashlight effects are done remarkably well, especially indoors, however it loses some of its magic outside when your flashlight beam doesn’t fade off into the distance and instead can perfectly illuminate the building roofs three stories above you.
The game’s audio does a tremendous part in helping set the tone of the game, with lots of creepy music and 3-d effects to allow you to hear the shuffling of creatures behind you. The music, combined with the well directed in game cut scenes serve to confuse and terrify the player, yet at the same time make them eager to proceed just to see what’s going on.
The controls work very well, and the frame rate is a thing of beauty, with nary a graphical hiccup or hitch during your entire play time. Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of variety to go with high frame rate. Most hallways look exactly the same, and there’s very little variation among the enemies. There’s the zombie, the spitting zombie, the worm, the green worm, the bugs, the flying bugs…you get the idea. Even the boss battles, of which there are six, have some repetition to them, with the player having to fight two bosses twice, with no variation between the fights themselves. This lack of variety in the gameplay does somewhat take the edge off of the terror as you quickly learn when the enemies will appear. If you’re in a hallway with some closets, there will be zombies in the closets. If you’re in a hallway with some vents, worms will burst through the vents. If you’re on a sky bridge, floating demon heads will be milling about.
More than anything else though, the game’s ridiculous save system is a complete deal breaker when it comes to atmosphere. For the most part, the save system works well, with the game auto saving every time you enter a new room. If you decide you’ve had your fill of hospital exploration for one day, simply turn off the DS, and voila, you’ll be brought back to the room once you start back up. If, on the other hand, one of the game’s monsters decides that you’ve had your fill of living, then you have to start at the beginning of the chapter, and it overwrites any existing save data. To call this frustrating is an understatement. Some chapters are small enough to be managed in 10 – 15 minutes; however others can take upwards of half an hour and feature copious backtracking as well as a boss fight.
To die at the end of such a chapter and have to do the whole thing all over again not only completely removes the player from the experience, but makes them want to chuck the cartridge out of the window. Instead of being afraid of what’s around the next corner, the player becomes afraid of losing their progress, which makes you all the more willing to simply run past any enemies in the hall rather than try and stick around and fight them. Plus, whatever feelings of dread were present the first time you worked through a chapter are completely gone once you’ve started it for the third time.
Even with the possible need to do some chapters over, Dementium isn’t a long game by any stretch and can be completed comfortably in six to seven hours. Once you’re finished with it, and have viewed the very confusing and somewhat unsatisfying ending, there’s no real reason to go back and play it again, unless you feel the need to place artificial constraints upon yourself and play the game using nothing but the nightstick and harsh language.
With this game, Renegade Kid has shown that they’re able to pull off some very impressive technical feats on the DS, however there needs to be some equally impressive design choices married with the technology to make whatever they do next a stand out title. As it stands now survival horror fans that can’t let a zombie go by without shooting it should be able to get past the cruddy save system and repetitive gameplay and have a good time, however the casual fan may find this trip to the hospital nothing but a dose of bad medicine.
