"Dim the lights and pull the shades, for it's time to play a handheld horror title like no other."

Developed by Renegade Kid, a fairly new developer to the videogame industry, Dementium: the Ward takes the Nintendo DS handheld to a whole new level with a frightening, gory first person experience that pits you against monsters and the darkness itself, leaving you with a stunned impression that will make you ponder how this dark title managed to get on your DS.

Now, before I begin, I must stress the fact that Renegade Kid is, again, a newly established developer, and the fact that they could dish out such a masterfully constructed game despite their status and the limitations to Nintendo's handheld is simply astounding. Dementium: the Ward sports graphics that are truly impressive for the DS, sounds that will send a chill down your spine, and controls so well nailed down that you would begin to wish that you could use the DS as a controller for your home consoles.

Even with the tidbits that I will be counting against this title, I just have to say immediately that Dementium: the Ward is a title that must be experienced; any DS owner out there that does not take the time to experience this game is really missing out.

For another minor note, keep in mind that the best way to experience this title is to play in the dark with a pair of headphones handy. I shall explain why later on.

Graphics: 9/10

Honestly, I am dumbfounded. The attention to detail that Renegade Kid put into Dementium: the Ward is incredible. From the environments to the monsters to the innocent civilians that become consumed by the insanity surrounding you just screams amazing. I can say with a straight face that Dementium: the Ward's graphics are especially noteworthy, and I don't feel the need to add ‘for a DS game.' To top it all off, the game runs at a solid sixty frames per second.

Granted, many have said that Dementium's levels are quite repetitive, and I agree. The most common areas you will encounter involve hallways, glass hallways, checkout counters, bathrooms, and offices that have the occasional pushcart or furniture overturned within. Thankfully, this is broken up with several other remote, albeit frightening, locations including stairwells, rooftops continuously pounded by the rain, chapels, and even morgues, but they don't occur enough to prevent me from taking down a point from the title. I can't say whether or not Renegade Kid was struggling with bandwidth issues due to Nintendo's DS cartridges, but the lengthy repetition in the designs of some of the levels tend to get to you after a while.

However, as you begin to play the game, the dark, shadowy atmosphere will pull your attention away from this fault. With dynamic lighting, haunting shadows, worn, bloody walls, and frightening monsters ridden throughout the hallways, you will almost feel a cold sweat trickling down the side of your face as you slowly place through the dark, decrepit, and blood-covered hallways of the abandoned hospital. Oftentimes, I found myself so focused on playing the game that I even forgot that I was doing just that: playing a game. When a title is capable of doing that to me, it becomes an instant classic in my book.

And when I mention ‘dark, shadowy atmosphere,' it's no hyperbole. Just as the front of the game box implies, Dementium: the Ward takes plenty of inspiration from Doom 3, rendering you in a need to light up the environment as well as survive in it. You'll be switching between your flashlight, which is an actual light source, not a graphical trick, if you can believe it, and the slew of weapons to combat the horde of monsters hell-bent on killing you.

Speaking of, I love the design of the monsters in the title. I will admit right here and now that they're pretty generic monsters, which include zombies, leeches, and bugs, and throughout the game, you will mostly just encounter different variations of each, but the unique look to each one will aid in the horror element that Dementium: the Ward delivers.

The zombies have the look of a twisted hospital patient, with bandages around the head and tattered hospital pants. Their ribcages continuously open and shut, revealing their hearts, as they move back and forth between the hallways if they're not running straight at you. That is to say, they don't ‘run' as much as they do stagger towards you quickly. In a nutshell, it's safe to say that if one sees you, you can run away from it, but don't expect to be able to maneuver around it.

The leeches are tiny critters that emit silent, gooey noises as they wriggle about the environment and wail when they discover you and attempt to take a bite out of your body. Despite being the weakest creatures in the game, they can be deadly if taken lightly, as they're quite quick once they turn hostile.

The bugs are pretty straightforward; they'll fly at you once you enter the room. The only way to deter them is to shine your flashlight on them.

There are a few unique monsters outside of the bosses, which I won't reveal for spoilers' sake, including legless wretches that vomit acid at you and banshees, my least favorite creatures in the game. Unlike most of the game, which makes fine use of sound and graphical content to put you in a stage of edginess, the banshee is a form of a bodiless monster that just flies straight at you while screaming such a high-pitched scream that you'll be covered in goose bumps once its creepy visage fills your DS screen. I wanted to give Dementium a perfect score in the horror department for not resorting to cheap shocks to frighten you, but the banshees are close enough to be just that.

As for the weapons, these are pretty straightforward, too. You get a flashlight, which can scare away bugs, as I've said, a pistol, a shotgun, a buzz saw (believe it), as well as a few others that I just don't feel like giving away right now; you just have to play it to find out.

What I really like about the guns is their effects outside of just being weapons; Renegade Kid did us the favor of not forgetting that guns can be a light source, so every shot you make lights up the hallway or the dead of night.

Overall, Dementium: the Ward is a piece of artwork, and just short of a masterpiece. The repetitiveness of the levels is a bit depressing for a horror title, but the attention to detail in the midst of all that and the atmosphere it pulls you into is just fantastic.

One of the technical downfalls I should point out is the monster spawning; unlike past titles where killing a monster keeps it dead and if anything were to take its place, it would be after a significant event and it'd be something different altogether, monsters just continuously respawning in Dementium: the Ward. You can kill a zombie in one room, leave, come back, and it'd be alive and well again. Couple this with the fact that you have a limited supply of ammo and this can become very frustrating.

Controls: 9.5/10

What can I say? As you play Dementium, you'll be focusing on the game itself from beginning to end. There will never be an instant where you curse under your breath because of a mistake in a command input, and the controls are so intuitive that you might, once again, forget that you're playing a videogame.

Given, as you start out the game, you may drag the stylus or the thumb pad and accidentally hit one of the four options on the touch screen, but when this happens, you'll take notice and it will never happen again unless you're just plain clumsy.

Weapon selection is a bit odd, too, as objects are stored at the very bottom of the touch screen and tapping them equips them, which can become a bit of a hassle in a stressful situation, but becomes second nature in no time flat.

My last small gripe is running. I don't know if slow movements were purposely placed in order to help the game in a technical standpoint so that it ran better or if it was to help the player control better, but your default speed is a slow walk. It will get you where you want to go, but some instances just drag on and on. Thankfully, a sprint command has been implemented in the form of a double-tap-hold on the D-Pad, moving you from a slow pace to a brisk jog. The problem with this is that the only certificate you have that the command was a success is if the screen bobs more quickly, which isn't always as clear as it should be. The command itself is intuitive enough, but if any error were to occur during the timing of the button presses, it could be catastrophic in a hazardous situation, and that's where I take off the half point.

Overall, though, Dementium: the Ward controls like a dream. Moving the camera via stylus drags feels completely intuitive, and turning speeds have been fine-tuned and polished to a mirror shine. When it comes to aiming, the cursor drags in a very similar fashion to Metroid Prime: Hunters, offering a more in-depth control to the aiming system, which, by the way, couldn't be any more precise and polished. When you're tackling zombies, leeches, banshees, or just shining your light on bugs, the first person aiming has never felt more natural, and you'd wish that console games controlled this well. For a final note, there are no tweaking options for these, so what you get is what you get.

Really, that's all I can say, other than whoever it was that said the DS isn't a first person shooter handheld ought to be kicked in the head after Dementium was released.

Story: 6/10

Here's where the game begins to fall apart, though. The story itself is very straightforward as well as predictable in some cases. You're a patient to this strange asylum and can't remember who you are or where you are as you begin to walk down the decrepit halls filled with dead bodies and murderous monstrosities. Aside from escaping with your head on straight, so to speak, you must figure out what caused all of the madness.

To give Dementium the benefit of the doubt, this really adds to the creepiness of the title and feeling hopeless and lost gives me a state of edginess, but it really helps to understand exactly what I'm trying to do other than trying to escape. Had Renegade Kid just worked in a few more minutes of cutscenes to show a ‘before and after' effect on the hospital, perhaps the storyline would be a bit more clear and in-depth, but right now, it's just quickly pieced together to excuse why this game was made in the first place.

Being the storyline nut that I am, that's why I dock the score down to what it is. Games like Resident Evil and FEAR may have been popular classics, but it's nothing more than a kick to the groin when everything wraps itself up only in the end, giving a vague excuse as to why everything happened.

Besides, stories have become a crucial element to gaming, not just a sub-feature; storylines develop characters, plots, and the like that make gamers want to continue playing. I will certainly play another horror title if Renegade Kid were to make one, but it would just be a more gratifying experience if a story could push the atmosphere even further and give me a sense of purpose.

Gameplay: 8/10

If you look at the front of the Dementium: the Ward box, it says that this game is like a cross between Doom 3 and Silent Hill, and that couldn't possibly be any more truthful.

The game is dark, very dark. From the very beginning, your only light source will be your flashlight, and whenever you put it away, you won't be able to see anything more than a couple feet away from you. With that said, spotting the monsters that lurk the hallways is one thing, but to fight them in the dark once you draw a different weapon is another thing; be prepared for a slew of close quarters combat with absolutely frightening monsters filling your DS screen.

In the end, having to fight monsters in close ranges in the pitch-blackness of night is just a memorable experience.

To make matters even more gratifying, your eyesight won't be your only key to survival. As I've said before, if you have headphones, you really need to wear them. The developers made good use of sound to create a surround sound-like experience that will, in the end, save your life when you hear a monster lurking beyond the corner, when a vent to your right breaks apart, or when a zombie leaps over the fence to your left.

All in all, eyesight will become more of an afterthought as you play through the game and resort to having to trust your ears just as much to get out alive.

As a survival horror shooter, Dementium: the Ward nearly hits the nail on the head. The atmosphere is frightening, making the first person shooter aspect to this game gratifying, and will leave you with a satisfied feeling once you're done.

However, the title isn't perfect. Dementium: the Ward clocks in somewhere between 4-6 hours, and that's only if you're as cautious as I am and backtrack a lot to make use of all of the equipment you can find.

Also, again, monsters mysteriously respawn throughout the game once you leave the room, making backtracking more of a chore, and the fact that ammunition is limited doesn't help at all.

Lastly, the save system is either a hit or miss. As you go from room to room, the game saves automatically. This is good as you can pick up the game and stop whenever you like, but if you make a mistake, chances are you might have to deal with it if you have already moved on.

The worst part about the save system, however, is the chapter restart. The game is riddled with different chapters as you progress, and the biggest downfall about this aspect is that when you die, you have to start the whole chapter over again. This may not sound so bad if you die relatively quickly as you start a new chapter, but around the halfway point of the game, the necessary paths just connect into a huge maze that will take seemingly forever to traverse, and if you die, the resulting feeling is self explanatory, and it can't be helped since monsters respawn continuously.

To wrap it all up, there are a few quirks in the title that really need to be addressed, which usually result in chore-like gameplay, but the meat and potatoes to it, the first person horror aspect, is just flawless. I really enjoyed playing it, and would definitely recommend it to anyone that owns a DS.

Sound: 10/10

I have to cover this before wrapping up my review; I tip my hat to Renegade Kid for expertly crafting some of the best sounds I've ever heard in a game.

The music is just beautiful, in a horrifying way, if you get my drift. Making use of melodious piano music coupled with other orchestrated instruments, you get a score that both frightens you and relaxes you, almost in the same sense as the save music from Resident Evil 4.

But when it comes to the frightening aspects to the game, you'll get a subtle track that fits the scenario so well that, sometimes, it blends right in and you forget it's there. It's just a memorable experience that really stresses the horror aspect to Dementium: the Ward.

Outside the music, haunting environmental sounds, occasional voiceovers, and monstrous calls aid the atmosphere and the gameplay altogether.

As I've said, Renegade Kid made excellent use of audio to enhance the gameplay. When you wear headphones, you'll hear dozens of things, both alive and not, as you walk through the game. You'll hear rainfall and thunder coming from the windows, static from the PA system above you, furnaces quietly humming, and groans, moans, and hisses resonating around the corners of the hallway.

There's even the occasional voiceover either coming from the distressed citizen, perturbed child, homicidal psychopath, and the ominous voice that rings in your head at one point during your adventure.

All of this plus the sound of your own heartbeat (which you can tone down as well as the music if you want in the options) just creates a horrifying ambiance that sets a new benchmark for handheld games.

Overall: 8.25/10

Is Dementium: the Ward perfect? No. The save system is a bit atrocious, depending on how you deal with it, the repetitiveness of some levels can get to you if you let it, and the lack of a full story hinders the experience from what it could be.

However, coming from a developer that just established itself earlier this year, Dementium: the Ward is phenomenal, especially when Renegade Kid's attempts created a title that created new benchmarks for graphics, gameplay, and atmosphere on a handheld that was perceived to never achieve such things.

I'd highly recommend a buy. However, if you're iffy about what made me dock points, please try renting it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would like others to indulge in the experience as well.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/07

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