"A Really Good First-person Adventure Throttled By A Broken Save System."

I really don't enjoy writing a “review” without having played a game to its end, or at least giving it a lot of my time. But Dementium: The Ward is a game I just could not bring myself to complete. Before you discount this review, however, understand that I am a fan of survival / horror, action / adventure and FPS titles. What sinks this ship is not the gameplay but the save system.

The gameplay in The Ward is actually quite fun. It's nothing new and it's not terribly interesting, but it's still a fun romp, all the same. The levels are a bit repetitive and the flow of the game is completely linear, but The Ward has tons of atmosphere, as well as spot-on controls and a very practical interface.

The game is divided into chapters. The premise is that you wake up in some horribly bloody, ram-shackled hospital, and must explore to uncover a gruesome mystery you have been thrust into. The control configuration is pretty much the exact same thing we've seen in games like Metroid Prime: Hunters (MPH) and Bros. In Arms DS, and it's easy to just jump right in and have fun.

Where the game takes a complete nose-dive, however, is in its broken save system. Someone from Gamecock (the publisher) should have jumped in and led the developers to high ground before releasing this title in its current condition. Let me explain…

You can save anywhere you like at any time during the game. Awesome! More DS games should be like that. But – and prepare for a huge, colossal “but” – if you die at any time while making your way through a given chapter, you'll have to redo the entire chapter. Where I left off was at the end of Chapter 4 (now this wasn't the first time this happened to me, so I didn't give up right away, but after several occurrences, I was sickened). I get to the fourth-chapter boss, die and, after going through everything in that chapter, my save data gets cleared out, starting from everything after the beginning of that chapter. So, even if you saved, that save data gets erased and you must now go through the entire chapter again.

Well, most good boss battles require several stabs, if you will – if you're not tethered to a walkthrough – to grasp fully how best to approach the boss. Who in God's name thought it was a good idea to require players to redo entire chapters each time they fail at a boss battle? Is that somehow supposed to make this game more “hardcore.”

And what makes all this so disheartening is that for fans of both survival / horror and the DS system, The Ward is a real treasure otherwise. But rather than allowing you to enjoy that which you have earned – by spending your cash on this game – the producers offer no lubrication each time the game violates you with this horribly archaic save system.

The graphics are really nice, though not because of the polygon count; the game just has a really nice art design for a first-person adventure on the DS. But the lighting is even better. You're carrying a flashlight much of the way through the game, and draw distance is really cleverly executed, both when the flashlight is in use and when it's not. The sound though is what truly creates the atmosphere for what this game is meant to be. Great creature sounds, breathing effects and music. Also, the fidelity for all those aspects is really topnotch, considering the system the game is on. The framerate seems to be every bit as fast as MPH, and the output of the sounds and music is crystal clear.

But you'll likely never enjoy it…

Even if you do decide to suck it up and trudge through chapters over and over again just to get slapped back down to the beginning of the chapter, you'll likely feel (unless you have no emotions and don't mind being abused by the game) completely resentful toward how the save system was constructed, thus sucking out any fun the game might have to offer. It truly is one of the worst design decisions ever made in a video game – and this is for a system designed for gaming on the go.

Renegade Kid (the developers): you guys have a lot of great ideas and you obviously have a lot of talent. No, I think the blame lay at the doorstep of your sugar momma, Gamecock. They should have steered you guys away from this moronic save system, which would have saved this otherwise-enjoyable DS adventure. But as it stands, you created a system that leaves players without any desire to go on this adventure. Very disappointing.

Readers should take from my comments what they will, considering I didn't take the opportunity (yet – perhaps at some point I'll be bored enough to try and complete the game) to finish the game. But I do hope my impressions will give you a better idea of what you're getting yourself into with The Ward.

Overall 6.5

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/07

Game Release: Dementium: The Ward (US, 10/26/07)