Dementium: The Ward (DS) Review

For a first time DS effort, Renegade Kid has a lot to be proud of. They've picked up a genre many have avoided on the DS (first person shooters) and have combined it with another type of game that has been all but entirely ignored until recently (horror) with fairly successful results. The game cunningly dances around the limitations of the hardware and manages to create a compelling atmosphere alongside its gunplay and dark rooms. It's not perfect by any means, and a follow up could stand to improve in some key areas, but this is an example where the sum is definitely greater than its parts and leaves me pretty impressed.

In the spirit of getting the bad out of the way first, there are a few moderately significant issues that deserve to be mentioned to anyone considering picking this up. Dementium: The Ward should probably have a name more fitting of its concept, for example. Like, Dementium: A Guide to Horror Movie Cliché. I don't mean to be sardonic, but the game literally tries to touch base with every last horror film and game convention of the past thirty years like some awkward compendium. The game takes place in an insane asylum, you don't know why you're there except everything is covered in blood. Gasp! There's the words scribbled on mirrors and walls bit (in blood). There's the haunting cries of children in various rooms. There's the lone child standing amidst awful sights to give you a jolt. There's even monsters which fall out of ceiling vents! Everything about the horror aspect of this game you've seen before, and although the game provides suitable mystery to keep you going forward it's all going to seem pretty conventional by the end.

On that note, there's also the problem of repetition among the level design. I don't know if it was a limitation of budget, or hardware... but in every chapter you'll be tackling various sections of the Insane Ward, and in these you'll uncover many, many sections that simply repeat or are just a mirror image of another, early part of this same level. There are even entire parts of THE SAME ROOM which will repeat each other, like the way boxes are stacked in a corner or the seemingly endless chain of supply closets that are all messy in exactly the same way. I got a giggle at the time when I passed a row of clean filing cabinets in one room, and then in only a few rooms over I got the exact same layout except it was all covered in blood. This gets boring and sort of ruins the exploration aspect a bit.

The final negative comes in the form of constantly respawning enemies. I know some people don't mind it, but I got tired of this back in the NES era and it's no less irritating now. If I work at clearing a room, do I want to clear it again if I just happen to step back through the door? If the ammo was limitless, this might not be an issue, but you have a semi-strict supply which leaves you cautiously avoiding backtracking wherever possible. Because do you really want to clear out the same ceiling slugs that you did five minutes ago?

If that seems like a lot on paper, the reality is the amount of impacts how you enjoy the game is relatively minimal. And what it is at heart is a genuinely fun first person shooter with horror elements. Most of the time you'll be shooting things, and the game has a few control schemes you can choose from to make things easier. At the end of the day, though, the one they start you off with works magnificently, and you'll be running and gunning in no time. I was a bit wary before entering this, but this is the first time I've ever enjoyed first person shooting on a handheld. Merely being such a game is a major accomplishment . The sensitivity of your freelook seems perfect, and shooting things at any angle is a breeze. The only issue with the shooting, to reiterate, comes from the fact that the game forces you to encounter respawned enemies all the time, so it might get boring doing the same thing two or three times depending on the backtracking required in any chapter. Shooting can occasionally become a chore due to this design flaw.

Another surprise for me personally was how effective this game is in drawing the environments themselves. If you turn off your flashlight (which in of itself is impressive effect), you're literally enveloped by the darkness. But when you can see what is going on, you'll notice startling detail for the little DS. It's no where close to another recently released horror game called Silent Hill Origins, obviously, but the DS cannot realistically be expected to have such results. So what is achieved is an admirable feat considering no larger developer has really come close to creating this sort of graphical atmosphere on the platform. Textures, though still having that trademark pixelation found on the hardware, is remarkably high quality and monsters are rendered with appropriately grotesque designs. The primary fault with the presentation actually has to do with how often you'll be seeing these samey environments, as repetition is a important issue as mentioned earlier.

One major aspect of the game comes from the various puzzles you'll be encountering on your nightmare through the Insane Ward. While many of them are extremely simple to figure out (passwords being written on walls a few rooms over), there are still an impressive array of challenges that really make good use of the DS functionality and allow you a much needed break from the often oppressive surroundings. The ability to write on a notepad makes this all the more intuitive, and you'll always have that tangible sense of reward that games need to reach that next level.

Expecting perfection from anyone, let alone a relatively new game developer, is not fair. At the end of the day what you can hope for is what we actually got, an extremely noteworthy effort that bodes well for future releases from this company. If you like, you can get bogged down in all the little flaws and it'd be a legitimate view to feel these may weigh the product down a bit more than I thought they did. But the fact that Renegade Kid managed to tackle three things that DS does not do particularly well - horror, first person shooters and 3D - and do it well is more than worthy of my recommendation.