This isn’t a full review but a first impressions of the game. I haven’t played very far in yet but enough to get a feel of how it works. First off this is hands down the bloodiest game you’re going find on the DS…it’s everywhere. Second it’s probably the best horror game out for the DS though there aren’t many in this field.

You start the game awakened from a bad dream only to find that you’re living one. You are in a hospital or asylum that looks like a slaughter house littered with dead bodies and unidentifiable bloody chunks. Stuff is strewed everywhere and it’s your job to look through the debris to find the clues you need to piece together what’s going on. The ads for this game say it’s Doom3 meets Silent Hill and though that’s accurate it may be a little misleading. When I think of Doom3 I think of fast paced, twitch fps but that really isn’t the mechanic that’s used here. The game mechanic used from Doom3 is the flashlight and weapon switching one. But before you groan let me say that when you play this you’ll realize that this is where that game mechanic belongs. In Doom3 it didn’t work because A) it didn’t make sense that a futuristic military force didn’t develop the gun light or ductape B) the uber high pace of the fighting just made it unpractical. In Dementium you have a slower paced game like a Silent Hill or early Resident Evil game, it’s times of exploration mixed with moments of combat and the flashlight effect really adds to the uneasy feeling of being in that ward.

Developers Renegade Kid did a good job of using a lot of things that work well on the DS. Like you find a piece of paper that is accusing you of murder then you use it to scribble hand written notes to yourself like how lovely the decor is OR the security door key code written in blood on a patients wall. Yeah it’s not a Pokecenter and Nurse Jennie is nowhere to be found.

The controls of DW function like the Metroid fps so they are very natural and responsive. They feel a lot like a keyboard and mouse. Basically your stylus and touchscreen act as your mousepad and your d-pad is your movement (like wasd) and left trigger button is your attack. You also use the touchscreen to interact with the environment, inventory and items. It also has a medical heart monitor going that changes color (from green to red) as you take damage….nice touch.

I’m fairly early in so I haven’t experienced much combat but so far it shows promise. I currently have a flashlight and a night stick but I found a locked shotgun case so the future is looking up. I don’t want to comment on the fighting too much yet as I haven’t had a chance to tryout the gun play or get in the thick of zombie hordes yet so I have a lot left to experience. The melee combat is average as most fps games are. It’s just wack-o-zombie so I’m interested in seeing what a shotgun will feel like. A couple of things I would have changed are a little meatier sound effect when bashing zombies with a night stick and having them drop to the floor verses disintegrate. Not major things but for experienced zombie killers those little touches would have been nice.

Probably the only issue I can find with the game is the sound is very repetitive and annoying at times. Like the continually repeating warning over the PA or the blaring klaxon alarm get old quickly. It would have been better to have a simple but eerie underscore. Again this is just the first area so I can’t say that this is the case with the rest of the game. I’ll let you know.

Dementium: The Ward is good about hooking you early and giving you a lot of things you want to know more about. For example: Did I murder my wife? Who was the possessed little girl in the elevator? Who was that blond being hauled off by a freakishly large, axe wielding monster? It’s those kind of everyday questions that will keep you compelled to find out more. Hey, it’s everyday questions if you live in Mid Western towns like Raccoon City. My everyday questions are a bit scarier like McDonalds or Quiznos for increasing my cholesterol and high caloric intake to non-human proportions?

I look forward to digging into this game deeper.

-Wes

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 7:48 am and is filed under Gaming, Handheld, Sections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.