Dementium: The Ward Member Review for the DS

Welcome to the Ward.

Dementium is a FPS which will make the DS veteran's fingers cringe in pain, but its definitely worth its retail in ben-gay. You start off as John Doe in a wheel chair going through the halls of an unknown place. There is a fifteen second video and then it's on with the action.

You wake up in a bed with some glorious soud effects and some state-of-the-art rendering of lightning bolts from outside. This place is dark as hell so you scramble out of bed and ya don't know ANYTHING! I guess that's okay, clean slate and all. Anyway, you pick up a flashlight and a notepad right off. The notepad is really handy when it comes to the ridiculously difficult puzzles and codes that will occur later. The flashlight is your best friend. There is not a single moment in the game where you can see more than ten feet from your face. Maybe later in the game but who give a craps. Anyway, you get some pretty badass weapons later in the game and you need them. Here's why.

This game is brutal. You can spend an agonizing, tactical, balls-to-the-wall, all you've got half an hour on a chapter and then die two feet from the end and then have to restart. This is the save menu: (Save and Quit. Restart Chapter, Cancel.) You can save and quit if you're health is low but if you die you still have to restart the whole damn chapter. This pissed me off intensely. If you can look past that, there are some annoyingly tough puzzles that require miles of backrtacking to look for clues. Common example: Running down a hallway with a key I just scooped out of a toilet. I finally found the other two and I've been running around for an hour now. There's the lock. YES! YES! (stupid zombie pops out of a door and Ghetto stomps you. Shit. Start over.

This game doesn't cater to the slow minded. You have to have some decent I.Q.age to figger some of this stuff out. Their are some stupidly complex algorithms and stuff that makes me not want to play anymore but if that's your fancy, so be it.

Here's what i like. BOSS FIGHTS. This game has a decent boss battle at every other chapter or so. Ranging from a fat tub of spaghetti with a cleaver stuck to his arm to a creepy old man in a wheelchair with a gasmask and a gatling gun. (The more you play, the more you wonder what the hell is wrong with this hospital) 

The control of the game is pretty solid. I get kind of peeved that you can only run at a crawling pace. The real kicker is that you go slower in wide open areas. The stylus look is really smooth and responsive and you pick it up like that. The walking is a bit weird with the double tap to run but you look past that. The notepad/writing skills are respectibly accurate. You can write as small as you want and then realize you have a whole other page to draw Trogdor on.

Overall i think this game is a respectible FPS, especially as DS games go. The boss battles are fun. There is not really any replay ability. There is a constant moment of "Oh, that't what I have to do." going through your head when you die. You will mostly get creeped out by the audio over brute scaryisms. The story gets to be pretty deep towards the end. (Innuendo High Five *Slap*) and it is pretty addictive too. I honestly think it will train your brain better than Big Brain Academy. (Done with Review High Five *Slap*)