Genre: Action, FPS
Perspective: 1st-person
Gameplay: Shooter
Narrative: Horror
Published by: SouthPeak Interactive Corporation
Developed by: Renegade Kid LLC.
Released: 2010
Platform: Nintendo DS (NDS)
At the words "adventure on the Nintendo DS", the image of the classic hand-drawn adventure follows: a lot of text and dialogs, pixel-hanging with a stylus and, most likely, some kind of investigation (alternatively - dancing lawyers, see Ace Attorney series). Therefore, acquaintance with Dementium 2 will be full of surprises, especially if you have not heard anything about the first part: the authors also seem to call their game adventure, but on the screens of a man with a gun for some reason constantly kills some demons.
William Redmoor, suffering from an unknown disease, is suffering an operation on the brain. His attending physician, meanwhile, for some reason decides that William's mind is subject to some danger, rooted in the memories of the hero himself. The doctor plunges Redmoor into a state of controlled sleep, where he himself must deal with his nightmares. A man wakes up in a psychiatric hospital with blood-smeared walls, wanders along corridors, runs from people infected with headcrabs in white coats (it's unclear how they ended up here) until he finds a club. Further, he beats the face of the creatures of his nightmares for five hours, resolving between simple tasks and reading rare notes.
This is the approximate content of the first part, Dementium: The Ward (2007). There, moreover, there was an incomprehensible storyline about a man who brutally killed his wife, - this was mentioned in diaries, newspaper headlines and cut scenes. It seemed like William was a murderer (that's why his brain, feeling guilty, launched a self-destruct program), but the authors, without explaining anything, broke off the story in mid-sentence.
The sequel, in turn, also starts quite unceremoniously (but do not worry - with the first part of the game only the setting binds it): we wake up in prison, then suddenly find ourselves in the usual psychiatric hospital, run away, face demons, we are pursued by men in dark uniforms and a mysterious pest doctor. All the extras at the same time explain themselves for some reason in cranberry Russian ("I'm scared, I'm bad!", "Get out of the way!", "Help!"), Although they look like ordinary American cons in orange robes.
Despite the fact that the authors seem to be trying to file Dementium as a horror adventure game, in the shower it's still a first-person shooter - to the best of its modest DS-capabilities. Enemies here do not happen much, they die suspiciously easily and immediately dissolve in the air. You need to aim with the stylus, shoot with the left cipher, while the game itself is unfolded on the upper screen, and from the bottom there is access to the inventory, found scraps and map. I think it's not worth explaining that DS is not the most suitable platform for shooters, hands get tired and sweat in a matter of minutes. It seems that you can earn a tunnel syndrome for yourself in the evening. And William is inhumanly difficult to force to run.
What is important, in The Ward, all this did not look like a mockery. Ideologically, the first part was in many respects similar to the horror of Cursed Mountain: a simple, mediocre, archaic game, one of the key advantages of which is how it uses the platform's capabilities. In Dementium, after number one, everything was covered in blood and guts, William with a flashlight was studying the musty corridors at the ready, and it really did not have to shoot really often - all this could become the basis for some cheap Polish horror for the PC, but on a small DS it looked like pretty convincing. It was a designer of cliches and hackneys, at different times like Half-Life, Manhunt and The Suffering, but performed with respect to the original sources. The Ward played exactly on your knowledge of the genre: if someone wrote blood on the numbers on the wall, then soon there will be a combination lock, where these very numbers you need to drive. Monsters appeared in the frame strictly on the case, in order to overtake the horror.
The second part, spitting on everything, has slipped into a schizophrenic thrash (in this case this is by no means a compliment), immediately losing all its second-rate charm. Dementium 2 is one and a half times shorter than its predecessor and is almost completely devoid of puzzles (only primitive variations of the spots were left). Every second cut scene, instead of frightening and plunging into the abyss of despair, ends with a flash, which, moreover, is accompanied by such a vile sound that at first it seems as if the game is hanging. Shooting was about three times more, and light - as much as five: caves and cellars are quickly replaced by day streets and snow-capped mountains. In the arsenal there were new rifles and nails, the hero became faster, he learned to jump and squat. There were boring bosses, whose favorite focus is to spit acid or creep along the ceiling; they do not have chronically cartridges, you have to dance around scoundrels, trying to get them with a knife.
In short, the game has finally turned into an action movie, and they are just getting bad at the authors: in corridors it's easy to get confused even with a map, there are no interesting enemies, and to guess how to save the game (for this you need to find a special picture and click next to it button "Examine"), you need a remarkable wit.
Finally, the main problem went to Dementium 2 by inheritance from the original: this game is addressed, frankly speaking, to a nonexistent player. Emptiness. You can imagine a person playing on a compact DS in "Mario" or "Zelda", solving puzzles or launching a sub-step strategy in the subway. But who needs a third-rate action from the first person, uncomfortable, boring, with inappropriate splashes of the quest and tightly associated with not the most successful shooters of the last century? Probably only to those who have never before in their lives ever approached a computer or a normal game console for less than a hundred meters.