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Game Title: Dementium Remastered
Platform: Nintendo 3DS EShop
Developer: Renegade Kid
Publisher: Renegade Kid
Genre: Survival Horror
Age Rating: PEGI: 18+, ESRB: M for Mature
Release Date: 3rd December 2015 (US), 11th February 2016 (Europe)
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Game Score: 5.3/10
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Summery:
Sadly the original Dementium doesn't feel so patched up for a release on the 3DS after it's operation.
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Since it's release back in 2007 Dementium The Ward was horror that earned a scary reputation of it's own. It was well known for it's excellent presentation which pushed the limits of what the Nintendo DS could do. It's also not very common to see a survival horror game make quite an impact on a handheld gaming device. Dementium II that I recently talked about on my channel was aware of the issues the original game had got and improved upon them while also adding in a few tweaks of it's own. With only a recent announcement that Renegade Kid got their rights back with the title after the atrocious PC release of the second game they have reported a kick starter for a Dementium III and also remasters of the first two Dementium games in attempt to gain an new ordinance. So now here we are with Dementium Remastered on the Nintendo 3DS with a planned Dementium II Remastered which should be released maybe sometime later this year. To my disappointment Dementium Remastered doesn't feel so patched up as a modern game after it's original release on the DS almost 9 years ago. Why you may ask well I should start off by explain the basic gameplay and premise and I'll try my best to explain the changes and faults thoughout this review.
In Dementium you end up in a derelict hospital that is frozen in time and is also haunted with all sorts of grotesque monsters. You end up exploring the hospital to learn about the mysterious which I will not spoil and hopefully escape your life. You start of by picking up a flashlight which enables you to see where you are going along the way you get to pick up health and ammo items as well as other weapons. Now the remake does a few things right here, for starters the graphics have been brought up faithfully. Not only the environmental objects have improved edging but the blood and gore displays have plenty more detail to them as well making them more disgustingly great. Most notably is the flashlight has more of a realistic flashlight look to it compared to how the flashlight looked in the original version. The ingame environments also have an improved detail to them and of course the blood, gore and decapitated details combined with the pitch black navigation make for an unsettling atmosphere that the game designers went for back in 2007.
Dementium Remastered also fixes up the save system which was only present in the US release of the original game for what I understand, instead of saving every time you go through a door you have save points that are pasted through out the game's levels which is what you use to save your progress.
The game is split up into 16 chapters where you search around each area for health, ammo and weapon pickups, solve a puzzle, read letters and documents detailing information surrounding what is going on and lastly fight monsters. You have a notepad in the game where you can write down codes that you find which you can use to type in to advance onwards. Many of the puzzles are not hard or too complicated to figure out and they do make great use of the touch screen capabilities really well.
Enemies mainly range from zombies that need to be shot in the tongue of their stomach, zombies that crawl on either the floor or celling, maggots, screamer heads to flies and cockroaches in which those two types of enemies cannot be killed at all. In some of the stages you will come across a boss that you have to kill in order to progress further. They each have a pattern to exploit to order to beat them that honestly doesn't seem to be how it should be, for that I will back to that in just a moment.
There are 7 weapons in the game which range from a police baton to a pistol, shotgun, machine gun, sniper rifle, magnum and lastly the buzz saw. Each of them are really good to use especially the buzz saw which you can tear the enemies apart and it makes the baton a worthless weapon to have in your inventory. There is now a reloading system where you can press the assigned button to reload your current weapon you are holding which does the shooting in the game more depth but however in survival horror fashion leaves you only able to carry a small amount of ammo to fight most of the enemies with.
The controls in the game as the same as they were originally but the only difference is that movement is assigned and adjusted well to the Circle pad which those who played FPS titles on an Analog stick who be familiar with. There are also control options like using the Stylus, using the buttons, the Circle Pad Pro or the Analog sticks on the New 3DS consoles. I only played the game using the Circle Pad and Stylus controls and I think it is the general must use control scheme to use.
The game's soundtrack mostly consists of creepy piano based tunes which isn't really amazing to be honest but it does fit the mood of the game's dark and unsettling atmosphere. The soundeffects are really nice including the stormy sounds and the voice acting for what little it offers is really solid with the praise going to the main villain the Evil Doctor.
Now with all the praise of the game out of the way I can finally talk about what I do not like with this remake. Now in all fairness the game as I mentioned has much better detail put into it then the DS original but then you come up to parts where the game decides to reuse areas with similar looking corridors in attempt to pad out the game time. It's lazy design because after a while the areas you tend to go through look rather the same and it feels that you've been through the same copy and pasted rooms over and over. I understand that the game itself is based around the hospital but when the environments are copied and pasted all round then it makes the game repetitive. Other things I noticed is that the some windows have a nice rain animation while other windows don't for some reason. I also noticed only frame drops when you near piles of barricades for some reason but at least the action stays smooth and consistent.
Now to discuss the original Dementium's biggest issues and that would be the way that you have to switch between flashlight to a weapon to deal with the enemies. The issue with that is you can't hold both a flash light with one hand and use a gun on the other hand, that means when you are in combat you might end up shooting blindly into the darkness and it's most notable with the small enemies. You have to shine the light to see where they are and then switch to a gun to aim and shoot them down but with the small enemies it becomes hard to see where they are forcing you to switch to the flashlight to find out where they are hiding. This is frustrating that it's present in the remake because it was noted as one of the game's flaws in the original version before the designers improved on that in the sequel. Why couldn't the designers have the flashlight be used with like the pistol or magnum or make it attached to a shotgun or assault rifle or something? It would have improved the exploration in the game a lot more.
The enemies in the game are much faster then they were originally which to be honest it tends to make avoiding or running away from them nearly impossible. You can enter into a room with flashlight on hand and they are ready to attack you which with their increased speed makes it unfair for the player to avoid taking damage. You can hit the inventory button on the touch screen which pauses the game giving you time to select your weapon which gives you a chance to react however if fighting against two or more zombies at once combat becomes more difficult. It makes more sense at later stages to run past them if you possibly can. Thankfully the designers have done something about the enemy respawns which occurred in the original game. This time enemies you kill don't respawn but in some fights with the maggots there are still times where they spawn infinitely and sometimes as I said before it's best to avoid taking those on. Some of the bosses have also have increased speed which can make fighting them a little unfair, I noticed that against the wheelchair guy he spawns randomly with each attempt and he speeds all over the place like he's hopped up on energy drinks. You can't even cheat around corners to get at him meaning that it's almost impossible to get at him now without him dealing some serious to you. He can also shoot you through the walls to hit you, that's fair right? Fighting against him mainly now boils down to luck hopefully that he doesn't go too far, throws a bomb at you or spawn were you want him so that you easily pick off his health bar and finally kill him, and by the way you fight that guy twice. As much as I do find the enemy AI deadly they do tend to wonder aimlessly or in some cases bang themselves to a wall comically.
Lastly to my disappointment the game is rather short only lasting about 4 hours. The game has 16 chapters which takes roughly 7 to 10 minutes to complete even though strangely the name of chapters 5 to 7 I think do not show up for some bizarre reason. The only thing I can say that makes the game longer is with all the attempts that you have at certain parts of the game plus also the time it takes to replay other parts you went through before. You'll might get more attempts from doing the game on the brand new difficulties but even then the game only lasts a short while before you finish it. Just remember to save often and you'll be fine.
I have really mixed feelings about this so called Remastered game, Dementium was good but flawed game on the original DS but the remake carries most of it's issues with it and make the game difficult almost to a point that it feels sometimes unfair for the player. All the scary tension that the game tries to have going for it is sadly turns to frustration when you constantly dying at certain parts and being forced to replay segments before trying again at the part you died. The presentation does look fixed up for a modern release on the 3DS and I can remember full well how scary all the blood and gore splattered around made for an unsettling experience. It's just ruined because of the way the game reverts to the old flashlight system from the original game and it has some cheap enemy action and placement and the wheelchair boss being a little unfair. Look I'm not trying to make it seem like it's an unpolished remake but after playing through it I can honestly tell it is remake that for the most part the developers didn't know what they were doing. The developers did an awesome job with bringing one of their other games Moon to the 3DS with Moon Chronicles and that game does look and play like a more complete game where's this game doesn't even feel like one. It does show that Renegade Kid has an interest in reworking the Dementium series for a new ordinance but honestly it doesn't carry the polish that the excellent sequel has. Recommending this game is rather difficult, if you played the game on the DS and hoping that the game truly fixes up everything wrong will be very disappointed but those who never played the original or likes the tweaks as it is then this the game that up your alley. For the price the game is worth I think just over £13 might be a little much for the game's overall length but at least the Demented difficulty will the price worth it otherwise I recommend sticking to the DS original and give this version a miss. Hopefully soon Renegade Kid will finally release Moon Chronicles to the UK.
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The Good Points:
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1. It does have a few gameplay tweaks like reloading and running and manual saves
2. The graphics do feel a little more refined for the 3DS hardware and of course the atmosphere is unsettling
The Bad Points:
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1. Cheap enemy action and placement
2. Having to switch between flashlight and weapons during combat can be really frustrating
3. Recycled copy and pasted areas
4. It's still a very short game only lasting about 4 hours
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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