4cr Plays – Dementium 2

Renegade Kid’s Demenitum: The Ward was an interesting experience. It had its flaws – the save system and unbalanced difficulty being key ones – but it was a fundamentally decent shooter that really pushed what the DS could do graphically. I enjoyed the thing, and I couldn’t wait to see what the fledgling studio could do with the sequel. Now that Dementium 2 has arrived, how does it stack up?

Normally, I’d start one of these things off with a bit of a plot description. Really, though, it doesn’t matter. Your name is William, you wake up in a mental hospital, and within a minute of starting the game, you’re out of your cell and fighting an array of guards and horrific beasts. That’s about all that you need to know. There’s an evil doctor, but his motivations don’t really go beyond “being evil.” Let’s put it this way – you aren’t playing the game for its creativity.

The amount of work put into the art direction is about the same as that put into the story. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are phenomenal (more on that in a minute), but the monster designs are mostly yawn-inducing. There are zombies with mouths in their chests and giant maggots wriggling all over the floor. Most of the enemies in this game have come straight out of Todd McFarlane’s notebook and, well, they just aren’t that interesting. Likewise, the environments that you’ll be running through did nothing more than instill a sense of deja vu. The map is far larger in Dementium 2 than in the original, but I kind of feel like the first game was more interesting.

While I have my issues with the generic design, I can’t say anything negative about the developer’s technical chops. Dementium 2 looks fantastic. Enemies have distinctive features, there are plenty of objects in each room, and there are some pretty decent lighting effects in play. While playing the first game, I suspected that a good bit of this was a accomplished by shrouding everything in darkness, but even the outdoor areas of the sequel looks pretty great. Renegade Kid succeeded in producing a 3D DS game that didn’t make me want to stick a fork in my eyes – a feat previously limited to Nintendo’s DS Zelda games. They should license the engine out, I imagine that a number of titles could benefit from it.

The controls work well. You move your viewpoint with the stylus and your position with the d-pad, pressing the left trigger to shoot (there’s also a lefty option that flips movement and shooting to the right-hand side of the system). It’s a pretty logical control scheme, basically the same thing as Metroid Prime: Hunters, and it works well. The issue here isn’t with the game, but with the DS itself. On the DSi XL, my hand would start cramping after thirty minutes or so. Even on the smaller systems, the trigger button placement just isn’t great. I can’t imagine a better control scheme, but it isn’t exactly the most comfortable one either. My advice – play in short bursts.

Fortunately, Dementium 2 does a better job of allowing for this. In the first game, you could only save between chapters. If memory serves, there was a quick save, but the rarity of permanent game saves made death a frustrating factor. Starting the chapter over was not fun, and it would happen fairly often. Death still comes easily in Dementium 2 – this game is brutal at times – but it is less of an issue now that the developers have implemented actual save points. Throughout the map are glowing picture frames that allow you to record your progress. You’ll still probably get frustrated, there aren’t many of these portraits, but it’s not as bad as having to start a chapter over.

Taken as a shooter, Dementium is solid. It’s difficult, but not to the system throwing point, and it looks pretty fantastic. It falls kind of flat in the survival horror aspects. For a genre that lives or dies on the scares, Dementium 2 just doesn’t do much to make you jump. Monsters dive out from the dark, and there are plenty of gross-out moments, but my pulse never jumped. Half of it is the art direction. The monster designs feel generic, and we’ve all seen one too many horror movies set in a hospital, jail, or snowy campground. The other half is that this is a handheld. The game looks good, but without the power of the modern consoles (or even the PS2-era consoles) and surround sound, the whole thing just isn’t convincing.

Dementium 2 is a nice improvement over the original game. It looks great, the controls feel natural, and it definitely isn’t a cakewalk. If you’re looking for a new shooter to play on the go, look into the game. Don’t go in expecting nightmare-inducing terror and you won’t be disappointed.