Dementium: The Ward
November 5,2007 - First-person shooters aren't exactly plentiful on the Nintendo DS, but Nintendo proved with Metroid Prime: Hunters that quality first-person games can definitely be developed for the unique handheld. Another genre that doesn't give the DS a lot of love is the infamous survival horror genre. The only game of the genre available on the DS is Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, and that was also a pretty well made game. This past Halloween, newbie developer Renegade Kid and up-and-coming DS publisher Gamecock released an interesting title that combines the two genres, and the result was astounding.

Enter Dementium: The Ward. A survival horror game played from the first-person perspective. The game begins with the camera moving both slowly yet swiftly through the halls of an overly bloody hospital until it finally stops at a room where the main character is and instantly grants you control. This gives you an opportunity to explore your hospital room for a bit in this first-person perspective, and it works as a pretty nice tutorial.

The gameplay mechanics are not unlike that of Metroid. You hold the DS with your left hand and your thumb on the D-Pad to walk. The guy walks pretty slowly though, so you can double tap a direction on the pad to run. Your right hand is for the stylus and you just drag it on the touch screen to aim or look wherever you please. Those who have played MP: Hunters should instantly get a feel for the controls, but many fans have complained about their hands cramping up after just minutes of play. To avoid this occurrence, the developers at Renegade Kid have suggested holding the DS like you normally would with the left, but your right pinky should help support your left hand when carrying the DS. Amazingly, this method of handling the DS works like a charm. The developers should get major props for this. Another great thing the developers have done is making the game playable to lefties. You can change the options in the option screen, and it'll have the controls practically flipped (movement will be done with the right face and the shooting action would be performed with the right analog trigger instead of the usual left).

Also like Metroid, there's a heavy emphasis on exploration. When you first gain control of the character, the room is locked—so you can't leave without finding a key. But like all the other survival horror games, essential items are easy to find because they'll shine like a new dime in the sun. Near the bathroom you'll find a two-page notebook and pencil. The notebook reads, "WHY DID YOU DO IT?" Pretty strange, but so is everything else in the game. The story revolves around who you are and what exactly you’re doing. Once you find that, you can finally venture off into the extremely dark ward. Just make sure you find the flashlight and another weapon, so you don't die in there.

The game is divided up into chapters, but they're relatively random because there aren't any underlying objectives for you to finish to get to a new chapter. Chapters can easily start and finish just by entering a new room. While there's no telling how to actually get through with a chapter, the gameplay features a good balance between combat and exploration. So while you have the zombies with their exposed hearts for you to beat and shoot, you also have to keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks peculiar. There's one puzzle in which you have to play a "dead" tune on a toy piano in order to get a keycard to open keycard-operated doors. The puzzles aren't excruciatingly difficult, but if your eyes weren't open the first time, you'll be forced to backtrack, which isn't really fun because everything you killed on the way to your present location will respawn once you go back into those rooms. And no, health and ammo don't respawn.

While that may be annoying, it’s not the main gripe. Gamers have complained about a broken save system in the game. Read it here: it's not broken, but it is annoying. The game gives you the option to save whenever you want. That's great. All DS games should give you that luxury. But there's some fine print to that. If you die, all those saves before the start of your current chapter won't matter. That means that if you die, you have to start all the way at the beginning of your current chapter—so any new weapons, health, or ammo you may have gathered will all be gone. There is a bit of a trick to this though. If you know you're going to die at a certain point, you can turn the game off and start from that point because the game saves every time you enter a room. This is pretty effective, especially when you're just about to face a tough boss. The bosses are pretty tough in this game if you have no idea how to kill them. It's also worth noting that this cheap method of saving won't help you in the final chapter's end-boss.

The Ward is a sight to behold. All the cutscenes, and there is definitely a nice share, have been done with the help of the signature ActImagine codec—this codec makes DS visuals look a lot better than they really are. The atmosphere gives off an incredibly shocking yet suspenseful feel to the game, and it all really works out. The lighting, especially in flashlight corridors, looks very impressive and while a lot of what you see are sprites, they look lifelike enough.

The sound does its job to set itself apart from nearly every other game in the genre. If anything creeps you out, it will be the nearly flawless sound effects. Every enemy in the games makes a distinguishable noise, and it definitely helps when it comes to surviving in The Ward. However, please--in order to take full advantage of this game's stellar sound, put on some earphones. They nearly enhance the sound tenfold. The only true gripe anybody can have with the sound is you can only hear the main character when he makes his death cry. When he's getting his rear handed to him by zombies or screaming heads, he shows no signs of pain. It's just the screen that turns red. It's not a bad thing that ruins the game's value, but it definitely takes away from its realism.

Dementium: The Ward, despite the heavy amount of advertisements throughout the big sites, is a game that was definitely underhyped leading to its release. The game is short and can be beaten in under 4 hours, but this is a true achievement through and through despite its slightly below-average replay value. If this was just a test to see what Gamecock can publish, then they passed with flying colors, and this game will garner a steady fanbase as long as people take the time to play it. There's no multiplayer, but who cares? It wouldn't make any sense, especially with the game's story. While it probably isn't as scary as the developers at Renegade Kid hoped it would be, they still succeeded at pushing the DS to potential new heights with its twisted story, stellar graphics, tremendous use of sound, and nearly perfect use of the handheld's touch screen functionality. Dementium: The Ward is a terrific experience. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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