Living the college life. One day at a time.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Dementium: The Ward

Another gift I received for Christmas was Dementium, a FPS/mystery game for the Nintendo DS. Brain Age ² was the other DS game I got, so I decided to get Dementium over with to get on with my Sudoku and Brain Aging skills. I was impressed with the N64 -like graphics, and the sound effects and music were great. It turned out to be rather addicting and kinda fun. However, the entire game was a little repetitive, and it just became a chore to get all the way through it...rather than a fulfilling, joyous experience.

You start out with a nifty cut scene of being thrust in a wheelchair down a hall with all kinds of disturbing images like zombies, giant critters, and creepy little girls. You awaken in your room, with the lights off, and it's dark and stormy outside. You find a legal pad on the floor with "Why did you do it?" written on it, and there is a newspaper with a story of a man killing his wife outside the room. Lovely. You find that your name is listed as "John Doe" on the outside of your room and there is a woman's room (empty) next door with "Jane Doe" on the room. Sounds like you killed your wife, and they put you in the hospital for psychotherapy, but the game is young and there is much to discover. Very quickly, you get your most useful weapon: the flashlight (queue the Zelda item-acquiring music)! Now, this does no damage to any enemy, but you can only see about 4 feet in front of you without it. However, you can only use the flashlight if you aren't holding a weapon. Apparently, you only have one working hand. You then get the first real weapon: the nightstick! You can beat those zombies pretty good with this bad boy, but you almost always take damage (which is shown and heard through your heart rate) before you can kill one. Good thing this is a hospital, and there is medicine in just about every supply closet throughout the game.

You eventually get a 9mm, a shotgun, a revolver, and the electric bone saw, as you progress through the game (don't worry about me spoiling it for you, I played it so you don't have to). There are maps spread about all the floors and wings of the hospital and you'll need them all, or you'll be wandering in circles for hours, and the monsters respawn...your ammo and medicine don't. The game's favorite thing to say? "It is locked." I'd say about 80% of all doors say that when you try to open them. And there ain't a way to open a locked door; you gotta go around. You go through the 16 chapters of the game across 9 floors of the east and west wings of the facility. When you die...you go back to the beginning of the chapter. When you die at the end of a chapter frequently, that feature gets very frustrating. I found that going through the chapter to learn which direction to go, dying somewhere around the end, screaming and pulverizing your DS, then running through the chapter without fighting anything (except the bosses), is the best method of playing. The bosses are as follows: An abomination ripoff from WarCraft III (fat pink thing with a cleaver for a hand), a Gatling gunner in a wheelchair, possessed walls that spit out worms, and the final boss is a guy in a black trenchcoat/wetsuit with magic white gloves.

Here's the real spoilers: you didn't really kill your wife, leaving a creepy girl running about the hospital laughing and crying at you as the evidence in the entire game leads you to believe, you weren't even doing anything throughout this game. You beat the final boss, a cut scene pops up (they look pretty good actually), and you wake up in a nice, clean, lighted ward room. Your unmaimed wife and pretty little daughter await you right outside the door. Yay! It was all a dream. Then it fades out and it turns out that the Black Trenchwetcoatsuit man is operating on you with a large cleaver and saying that the first stage is a success. The following credits are actually the best part of the game. All the jobs that they listed the people doing were hilarious. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

As much as I love beating, shooting, and sawing zombies, worms, acid-spitting-thingies, floating heads, and guys in wheelchairs, this was definitely not the best game ever. The puzzles were annoying, and running away was more effective than killing anything. I'm just glad it was short enough to hold my interest long enough to beat it. Well, with all the getting lost, dying, and cursing the skies involved, it took 2 days or 15 hours to beat. Although, the actual successful playing time was about 4 hours. But who's counting?

Rating: C+

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