Renegade Kid delivers yet another great FPS title for DS.
Title: Dementium II
Platform: DS
Developer: Renegade Kid
Release Date: May 04, 2010
ESRB Rating: M – Mature
Renegade Kid are quickly becoming a must watch developer for the DS. In 2007 they released Dementium: The Ward for DS, showing that the DS and FPS Horror works well together if done right. Not everything was perfect in Dementium: The Ward, but thankfully, Dementium II fixes those problems.
First of all, if you haven’t played Dementium: The Ward and do want to play Dementium II, do not worry about being confused with the story line. They do loosely tie together but not enough that you’ll be absolutely confused on what’s going on. You play William Redmoor, having just recently been transferred to Bright Dawn Treatment Center, you wake up dazed and confused. You’re then taken back to your cell, and you jump right into gameplay. You’re thrust into a world where reality and a hellish dimension coincide and you’ll frequently slip between the two. Within the first five minutes of the game you end up in the hellish world and it really sets the tone of the game. As you progress, in typical horror game fashion, you’ll find documents scattered throughout that help you piece together the story and your own personal past. It’s interesting, but I don’t think they covered enough. By the end you’ll probably end up being more confused than anything, but slowly finding out more, especially about The Doctor, is exciting and makes you want to continue playing. If that doesn’t hook you, the games presentation certainly will.
We’ve seen a lot of great looking games on the DS but none have really gone the route Dementium does. It’s dark, it’s gritty and it’s downright terrifying. It’s no Silent Hill, but play this in the right settings—dark room with headphones—and you’ll be sucked into the game and may jump a few times. From bloody walls, to bodies being impaled with chains (moving still mind you), to the hellish creatures trying to kill you, it’s all gruesome and presented well. Frame rate never dropped once during game play, even in the big boss battles. Animations were smooth,and the voice acting is superb. The eerie music really sets the mood and helps to build tension as you round the corner and pray nothing pops out at you. If that doesn’t ‘wow’ you, Renegade Kid went the extra mile with authenticity. In one room of the game you pass three prisoners laying on beds. They’re all shouting in another language and some might just dismiss it as they don’t know what they’re saying, like I did not. Upon further inspection, the prisoners are all shouting in fluent Russian.
Going beyond the presentation, if a game controls horribly then it’s no fun to play. Luckily Dementium II doesn’t have this problem. It uses some standard DS FPS controls. Use the touchscreen to look around. L button to fire, directional pad to move. Jumping can be done one of two ways: double tapping the touch screen or using a conveniently placed arrow on the right side of the touchscreen. I actually think double tapping is easier as it doesn’t require you to aim for such a small arrow. Below the jumping arrow is the crouching arrow. In one boss fight you’ll be using this a lot and it was a bit bothersome to hit sometimes without actually looking at it. It caused me to die once. The only death I suffered in this game. As with other FPS games on DS, the controls can tend to make your hands cramp up although I did play on just a DSi. I wonder if I’d have the same problem with the DSi XL.
Renegade Kid listened to the fans and fixed a lot of the problems from the first game, such as how the game is saved. In the first one it only saved at the beginning of every chapter while in Dementium II you’ll find mirrors with red, swirling vortexes in them scattered throughout that you can save at. To mix up the scenery a bit you now travel outside to a village and even to a prison yard. You’re not forced to see the same bloody halls all the time which is a nice change up.
Even still, with all the improvements and excellent gameplay the game is not perfect. My biggest problem is it’s way too short and has practically no replay value. A mere five hours and you can complete the story mode; with hidden bonus weapon if you remember. Aside from a harder difficulty, there’s not much more the game offers besides the arena mode you can unlock. It would have been nice to have something extra to work for and make me want to pick up the game again. Dementium II is definitely worth a buy and Renegade Kid is certainly becoming one of my most closely watched developers, they just need to work on adding replay value.
