{"id":25244,"date":"2026-05-16T23:21:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/?page_id=25244"},"modified":"2026-05-16T23:21:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:21:19","slug":"dementium-the-ward-nintendo-ds-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/dementium-the-ward-nintendo-ds-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Dementium: The Ward Home Page<\/a><\/td>Nintendo DS Game Catalog<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Something tells me this hospital isn’t gonna pass their next health inspection…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~by tankMage (May 2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Score: 72\/100 (Decent)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementium’s atmosphere takes over the moment the action begins with rain pounding the windows and lightning flashes illuminating a low resolution room. From start to finish, this game feels brooding and claustrophobic with healthy doses of gore thrown in for good measure. In spite of its foreboding vibe and technically impressive graphics, there is not a whole lot of depth to this title. You’ll encounter the same for or five monsters throughout the game, with the occasional boss sprinkled in, and the weapons are mostly linear upgrades that are collected as you explore.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Oh…uh…sorry to bother you bro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Much of the gameplay loop is centered around exploring the maze-like Redmoor Hospital and slaughtering the horrific creatures which inhabit it. While this is fine and I enjoyed this title for the most part, it also made Dementium feel a bit shallow. After all, games like Doom and Quake did what Dementium does years earlier and offered much more variety. That’s not to say this game had to be innovative to be excellent, it just had to do more than lead the player through twisting hallways while fighting the same monsters in the same scenarios over and over again. A secret passage or two would have been nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementium also uses a rather funky control system that was designed to take advantage of the Nintendo DS touch screen while compensating for the handheld’s lack of analogue sticks. The control scheme is kind of fun and easy to use in some ways, but it also forces the player to hold the DS in an awkward manner, which makes the experience sub-optimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After considering all of Dementium’s virtues and faults, I have to say it’s a passable game and the sort of thing that’s well suited to the DS. Sitting down and playing it “seriously” for hours on end to write this review made a lot of Dementium’s problems stand out, but I have to admit that the devs probably didn’t design it to be played that way, since handhelds are intended to be played in short bursts. If I had played this game here and there while on a lunch break, I likely would have enjoyed it a bit more. That said, there are plenty of great DS games that do not suffer from this issue, so Dementium doesn’t get to skate by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You play a guy who wakes up in a completely trashed hospital after having some kind of horrific vision or nightmare. Why you’re there or how the hospital got in this state is a mystery from the start, but it’s pretty clear a lot of people died from all the blood…oh wait, I gotta say they got unalived. Anyway, what little story exists is told through occasional cutscenes and flashbacks as well as the odd journal entry.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This didn’t end well.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you’re expecting a Resident Evil or Silent Hill style survival horror tale (which Dementium seems to want to emulate) you’re going to be somewhat disappointed. There is very little narrative and what exists is disjointed. At the same time, it’s still engaging enough to get the imagination going and raise questions, so I suppose Renegade Kid did a decent job at telling a story. Buuuuuut, the story lacks any logical consistency. The setting doesn’t feel appropriate,we do not know enough about the “hero” to care about him one way or the other, and there’s no real antagonist to push things along. You’re basically just wandering through a spooky building while things happen. If that\u2019s not bad enough, the ending pulls one of those \u201cTO BE CONTINUED\u201d deals; I hate those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t help but compare Dementium to The Suffering, which had something of a similar premise, but did a far better job at creating a narrative. I suppose that’s where the real problem comes in. In the end, Dementium fails to live up to the titles from which it draws so heavily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphics<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By today’s standards, Dementium looks primitive and, too be honest, it looked pretty bad by the standards of 2007. However, the Nintendo DS was not exactly a powerhouse and the fact that they managed to get a fully 3D game running on it is impressive by itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to atmosphere, Redmoor Hospital is about as spooky as it gets. Flashing lightning, dark corridors, blood stains, and a general dinginess make for a creepy setting. Renegade Kid even added a filter to make the graphics even darker… which would have been a problem for anyone using the original DS, which had a notoriously dark screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I love the old school 3D graphics, I gotta say I was not thrilled with the monster designs. The entire game is spent fighting the same five creatures and none of them were all that great looking. The zombies are creepy for about five seconds until you look closely at them and realize they are more like victims of viva sections gone wrong than bloodthirsty monsters. The colors used for the zombies don’t work very well either. They’re just too bright for the drab world of Dementium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there’s the worms and bugs that infest the hospital, which were probably the least imaginative monsters they could have come up with. The only mobs that really stood out were the crawlers: legless humanoids who drag themselves across the floors and ceilings. The design and colors of these creatures fit the game world a lot better…unfortunately they still screwed them up by making the acid they spit neon green.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Put some pants on, will ya!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Dementium’s bosses are not much better than the standard enemies. I only found one of them, a guy with a gattling gun arm who rides around in a wheelchair, all that interesting and the rest looked like stock horror junk from the 2000s. Two of the bosses were recycled, which makes the situation even worse from both a gameplay and a graphics perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementium also deserves a bit of praise for its cutscenes, which were pretty good by DS standards. They were prerendered, but they fit the mood of the game very well, which isn’t always the case with DS games where such scenes were often far too detailed for the tiny system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gameplay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is where things get complicated. Dementium is a very simple shooter with some survival horror elements sprinkled in. Nothing really stands out about the action. You will hack and shoot your way through zombie-like creatures and the occasional boss. All the weapons are basically what you would expect to find in DOOM; heck the game basically feels like DOOM in a hospital. Some of the bosses are interesting and the sense of exploring a creepy building is enjoyable, but the action never really takes off. The hero moves slowly, the monsters are very repetitive (there are basically five or six types of enemies not counting bosses) and there is little variation to the setting. All in all, Dementium is about ten hours of wandering around while shooting at the same things over and over again, yet I could not bring myself to dislike it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementium may not offer much variety and it may fall far short of the games it so blatantly copies, but it is not bad. There is a slight learning curve with the control scheme (which I\u2019ll get to later) that pays off as you progress. Sighting in on monsters and blowing them away while dashing frantically through the wreckage of an old hospital is engrossing in itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later chapters require players to use their weapons and ammo more carefully as they explore the labyrinthine Redmoor Hospital. Some of the bosses, particularly the last one, were mildly challenging and even kind of creative, which certainly makes up for the otherwise bland gameplay. There were also a few clever puzzles and hidden weapons thrown in to spice things up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should also mention that players have to start from the beginning of the chapter they are currently playing if they die. Oddly, the game saves every time you pass through a door and you can continue from said saves as long as you do not die. In all honesty, I started hitting reset when I died, but the mechanic makes the game a bit more difficult and can prevent soft locks caused by running out of ammo. While some players expressed dismay at having to restart chapters upon death, I would much rather have soft lock protection than easy checkpoints. Just man up and take your death or be a scumbag (like me) and reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music and Sound<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music, just like everything else, is very basic. Many of the tracks sound like a ten year old\u2019s idea of a horror movie score. But some of the tunes are pretty darn good and it all fits the mood of the game. There is also a bit of voice acting, which is neither very good nor very bad. Dementium also uses a lot of stock sound effects that I think I have heard in a dozen games at this point. I used to complain about this, but how many footstep and gun samples are there and does it really matter if they are reused? I will say I hate the sound the electric buzzsaw makes. At least they named it appropriately, because I felt like my ears were being sawed off whenever I used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

User Interface<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never thought I\u2019d say this about a game, but Dementium\u2019s UI is perhaps its most interesting feature. Being a 3D game on a handheld that totally lacks analog sticks presents a few issues when it comes to moving and looking around. Renegade Kid solved this issue by using the DS\u2019s touchscreen. Players need only move the stylus or their finger along the middle portion of the touch screen to look\/aim. Weapons and menus are also easily accessible via the touch screen. The D-Pad is used to walk forward, backwards and strafe, which makes controlling the…uh…hero feel very natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end result is a very fluid and enjoyable control scheme that makes the rather bare bones action flow very nicely. However, there is a catch: Holding the Nintendo DS with one hand while using the touch screen for prolonged periods becomes uncomfortable after a while. I often felt my left hand cramping when I played for more than an hour or so, which made the experience less enjoyable. Those who have issues with their hands like may want to avoid this game for that reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Thoughts<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementium occupies a state of limbo between being a good game and a bad one. Usually games that fall into this category are rather boring, though Dementium manages to escape such a fate by being an outlier. You\u2019re not gonna find a ton of gorey 3D shooters on the DS and the control scheme is really different. While the action and the plot are unremarkable, there\u2019s enough value in them to make this game worth playing through if you happen to be a fan of FPS\/survival horror. That said, there are certainly better games that fit into these categories. The only real reason to play Dementium is if you are a retro enthusiast or if you just really happen to love the DS, because there are enough better games out their to occupy your time otherwise. I won\u2019t put Dementium in any top ten lists anytime soon, unless it\u2019s \u201cTop Ten Mediocre Games\u201d. It\u2019s a serviceable first person shooter on a system that is not known for its contributions to the genre and that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for reading my Dementium review!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RetroMaggedon.com \u00a92026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) Review Dementium: The Ward Home Page Nintendo DS Game Catalog Something tells me this hospital isn’t gonna pass their next health inspection… ~by tankMage (May 2026) Score: 72\/100 (Decent) Dementium’s atmosphere takes over the moment the action begins with rain pounding the windows and lightning flashes illuminating a low resolution … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25244","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}