When I think of horror I imagine horror films in the movie theater or on DVD in my room, being projected on the biggest screen possible. I also think back to games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and DOOM, which were also played on that same television, noticing that horror seems to have a direct relation to the size of the screen. However, with Dementium: The Ward, a bold experiment is taking place – can horror exist on the small screen of the Nintendo DS? We’re going to delve into this horror wonderland and find our for ourselves.

THE STORY SO FAR
It all starts off with a wheelchair, being ushered as quickly as possible down countless corridors and hallways of what looks to be a hospital, with strange people pushing you, little children being briefly visible, and blood is everywhere. Suddenly your ride comes to a stop as your wheelchair is dumped down a hole with you in it. You wake, but did you wake from a dream? Where are you and why does this hospital look like Pinhead decorated it?

Dementium: The Ward (Dementium from here on) is actually quite light on story, as for the majority of your time you're left with little rhyme or reason, knowing only that you’re in some hellish hospital or insane asylum and that you need to escape. Though you’ll run across a few characters from time to time and there are notes and clippings meant to help round out the narrative experience, for the most part the story from beginning to end is “Man roaming hospital and trying to survive.” You’ll wish that there was a more engaging Silent Hill type narrative, but the atmosphere is so well done, and the first person perspective helps draw you in and makes the somewhat lack of story okay.

GAMEPLAY
Horror videogames usually come in two forms: slow and atmospheric or either fast paced shooter. The best way to describe Dementium would be to imagine the first person shooter viewpoint of a DOOM, but use it in a slower tempo game like Silent Hill, where it’s much more about experiencing the atmosphere than running and gunning and peppering demonic enemies with bullets.

The game uses both screens of the DS with the top screen being the action of the game, while the bottom screen controls your character’s viewpoint and lets you interact with objects and display objects you can interact with and take. Meanwhile you’ll use the directional pad to move and the left shoulder button to use your weapons. The controls in terms of moving and looking are done really well, but it becomes a bit harder when you’re talking about switching between your flashlight and weapon (a must) and shooting. The biggest problem with the controls isn’t that they don’t work, but rather the fact that they work because you have to put stress on your hands and stretch them at times. The game doesn’t feel perfect in your hands, but you get used to it and adapt over time.

Dementium plays like an interactive horror maze, as you wander corridor after corridor, constantly advancing forward until you finally find the exit and enter the next chapter. The map – should you find the one for that chapter – does a good job of showing you where you’ve been, but the environments are so alike that it will often feel like you’re running down the same hall over and over, which becomes a bit monotonous after a while and frustrating as well; sure, hospitals in real life don’t change much either, but in a game you really do need to mix environments up if even just slightly.

As you advance through the game you’ll discover a few different weapons, ranging from pistols to shotguns, but everything is very real world based. Like most survival horror games ammo isn’t very plentiful, mainly because you can only ever carry enough to fill your weapon, never being allowed to stash extras on you for later. You’ll run across a fair amount of ammo, but you’ll often be full and will just have to pass it by and let it be, no matter if three minutes from then you’ll find yourself with no ammo and needing it badly. Health is like the ammo in that it’s often pretty easy to find it laying around in the form of pills, but it will only heal you to your max ability, and you can’t stash it for later.

There are quite a few different enemy types in the game, such as open-chested zombies, cockroaches, flying screaming heads, slithering slugs, and others. The creatures are actually pretty tough at times, especially some creatures you’ll meet early on when you aren’t properly armored to take them down. However, though some enemies are tough, others are all too easy, such as the first boss that you can beat by angling yourself in such a way that it can’t get to you and will basically stand in place until it’s dead. The enemies are also often too quick to give up their position (a zombie’s “ugh” in a dark closet) or watching a vent knowing that when you get close enough slugs will pop out.

Besides battling enemies you’ll also have to solve some puzzles, such as finding all the parts of a picture to find a code or needing to play a piano to find a key. The puzzles aren’t very hard to figure out for the most part, as they are often too blatantly obvious for you not to figure them out; there were maybe one or two puzzles where I had to sit for a minute and think, but even those puzzles were soon beaten.

The game has a lot of potential and could’ve been an amazing game, but there are a few gameplay designs that ultimately hurt the game, several of which we’ve already mentioned like the ammo and health system. The two biggest problems, however, come from the respawning enemies that will often come back to life as soon as you exit an area and then go back into it, and the death system which is a major chore. The respawning enemies is an issue because you’ll often waste ammo on an enemy, go through a door you think you need to go through, only to have to backtrack temporarily because of a goof and suddenly find yourself fighting another creature that shouldn’t be there since you just killed them. The respawning enemies is mostly an annoyance more than anything and one that can be overcome after a bit of learning. The death system, however, is completely lame and is something that is unavoidable, as you will die, and you won’t know how the system works until you die. Imagine slowly creeping down halls, battling enemies, and you’re taking your time so you’ve spent something like thirty minutes already on a level. Imagine then that after thirty minutes of careful hallway navigating and conservative battling, you run across the boss, it kills you, and suddenly you’re dead. A boss killing you isn’t the problem, but then you find yourself starting the level over, and having to replay all thirty minutes again. A checkpoint system or something should’ve been implemented, but no, instead you’ll have to play multiple times some levels until you quit getting killed. It’s not too bad when you only have to play a few minutes over, but when you’re looking at twenty minutes or greater, you’ll have those moments when you’ll want to quit playing the game entirely because the save system is so frustrating.

GRAPHICS
If you’re comparing Dementium to the majority of the DS titles out there or console games, Dementium is an eye-sore and really, really ugly. However, when you look at the graphics and 3D environment that the game is trying to create, the game actually looks stunning. The game is still blocky (most obvious in the enemies) and there are jaggies, but the game is so trying to push the graphical power of the DS that it’s almost forgivable. The game also features some great, smaller details, such as blood stains smeared on a wall, the dirty scribble of a word on a wall, and plenty of dirt and grime to really make you feel like you need to take a shower after playing.

AUDIO
Did I just hear a creature moaning? Was that a little girl I heard giggling? Was that a girl singing a song that just sent shivers down my spine? Whether it’s your heartbeat pounding in your ear or the eerie sound of your enemies shuffling down the hallways, Dementium does an amazing job at creeping you out. If you have a pair of headphones, definitely plug those into your DS, as it will really help encapsulate you in the creepiness.

IN CONCLUSION
Dementium: The Ward isn’t a perfect game as it does have some rather major flaws. However, we’re pretty impressed with how well the game did bring horror to the DS, and so we can overlook some issues. The game fails to stand toe-to-toe with the more established horror franchises out there, but as the little indie game that could, Dementium is pretty impressive. If you’re looking for a horror game for the DS, you could certainly do worse than Dementium.

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