--Note, Dementium Remastered
"Let the record show . . . the patient has survived phase one. Prepare for phase two."
--The Doctor, Dementium Remastered
Did the port retain the enjoyability and atmosphere of the game? Let's see (all photos were taken by myself using the Miiverse app on the 3DS)!
Production Values
In the original DS game, which I viewed a walkthrough for at one point in the past, textures were blurry and words on walls were sometimes illegible. But here, the superior technological power of the 3DS hardware over that of the DS is on overt display, with words clear and textures detailed. Colors appear great. The game always maintains a wonderfully constant framerate of 60 frames per second. Dementium Remastered is definitely not as visually pretty and vibrant as 3DS games like Super Smash Bros. 3DS or Majora's Mask 3D, however.
On the downside, the environments and enemies, though, are repetitive and have little variation.
Unfortunately, the player has to listen to repetitive music tracks; though the tracks themselves work very well, there are only a small handful which the game cycles through. The sound capabilities of the 3DS are fully exploited to deliver fantastic audio. Though enemy noises may be just as repetitive as the enemy designs themselves, they are appropriately loud, frightening, and sometimes jolting.
A clever easter egg has the name of the game developer/director listed as a patient in a file. Another takes the form of a poster for another of Renegade Kid's 3DS games Mutant Mudds, and another in-game poster for Xeodrifter, yet another title by the same developer, also makes an appearance. A posted clipboard marks the doorway to the room of an absent patient once diagnosed with "Video Game Thumb", the treatment specified as an "Ice Pack". The creators obviously had fun with this!
The controls, in addition to the frame rate, are incredibly smooth. The C-stick on the right of the New 3DS XL, which amounts to a second analog stick (Yay! Finally!), can be used with great ease to look around while the opposing circle pad controls movement. At last, the DS console line basically has twin analog sticks!
Gameplay
The player will wander around the numerous floor and wings of the hospital/asylum without much guidance about where to travel to next, much like if someone really did awake in an abandoned building disoriented and unaware of his or her surroundings. Very early on you recover a flashlight--extremely useful because the hospital is almost completely dark. I do mean completely. You can rarely see past several feet ahead of you. The flashlight randomly flickers and wavers, adding a great touch.
Puzzles and combat constitute the majority of gameplay. As the game progresses the player finds a revolver, nightstick, buzz saw, shotgun, and several other weapons that can dispatch the grotesque creatures trapped inside the building with you at varying speeds. However, you must deactivate your flashlight in order to hold any weapon--meaning your gunshots will be the only things illuminating the hallways when you put the flashlight away.
Story
As the game opens, you stare through the first person gaze of an unknown man as someone pushes him in a wheelchair through a hospital, with blood and bizarre creatures--and a man clad in black who appears again later on--greeting you along the way.
Next you wake in a hospital bed, alone in your room with a storm outside. You find a notepad with "WHY DID YOU DO IT?" written on the first page. In the second room of the game, a locked door to the left with "EXIT" above it highlights your inability to escape. The second document found is a newspaper with a headline that reads "MAN BRUTALLY MURDERS WIFE." Even this early on, it seems your character has possibly murdered his spouse. Shortly after, a large, hideous creature with a blade for its left hand (like the ghastly Persian executioner in the movie 300) drags away a young woman with blue eyes and a blue shirt in a hallway ahead. Then you eventually discover a men's bathroom with "MURDERER" written on the mirror; the accompanying women's bathroom contains a humanoid creature you must defeat with an obtained nightstick.
What the hell is going on?
(SPOILERS ahead!!)
After passing through a rooftop area, the player finds the infant ward and encounters another young girl who flees from you. A green image drawn on the wall of the blade-handed monster raising the blade against a frightened child shows that some other inhabitant had probably encountered the monstrous entity from before and survived.
Then highly strange events occur. A child's room with a toy house and scattered blocks houses a mini piano with "DEAD" scrawled in red (blood?) above it, heralding one of the first puzzles. The woman dragged away by the creature near the beginning appears at a gate holding a key but is kidnapped by a human in black attire--same one spotted in the introductory cinematic at the beginning of the game. A gramophone triggers a flashback of the character standing over the corpse of the woman in the blue shirt spotted earlier in the game, and the little girl flees the scene and closes a door between the two of you. Are you the man who reportedly murdered his wife?
Then, near the end, assuring you that "It will all be over soon', the Doctor stands before you. The Doctor was the man in black you saw twice before. What does this mean? Neither the Doctor nor another person elaborates.
Eventually, you stumble upon a letter.
"My Sweet Amanda,
I am sorry I can not be there for you. You must trust your Daddy, he did not harm me. I was already gone when he found me . . ."
It would appear that Amanda is the girl who fled from you during the flashback and that the author of this document is the wife you allegedly killed. But the letter indicates that either there was no murder at all or that something else happened to your wife and she somehow communicated with her daughter anyway. Or is the unnamed protagonist is being framed for something he did not do? Or did he imagine the whole scenario?
In the short climactic boss fight, you defeat the Doctor himself, only to open your eyes and find yourself laying on a hospital bed in the middle of the day, with your wife and child opening the door.
But after that, your face is shown for the first time. You rest upon an operating table with the Doctor standing by your skull, holding an instrument. "Let the record show . . . the patient has survived phase one," he says. "Prepare for phase two."
Intellectual Content
Since the story is brief and simplistic, with little speech of any kind, what themes do exist are reinforced by the atmosphere more than usual amounts of dialogue. Isolation and fear can be existentialist themes that explore the limitations of human knowledge and awareness, and, though the game narrative itself does little to develop these themes, they are present. With its minimal inclusion of verbally-spoken words and the ambiguity of the plot, the game could not formulate any explicit philosophical message (even if some deep themes are hinted at) or have revelatory dialogue between characters.
The game obviously deals with the fragility and depth of the human psyche, the epistemic limitations of the human mind, and the reliability of our mental perceptions. Were the contents of the entire game a stimulated experience caused during a malevolent or well-meaning psychiatric experiment? The hallucinations of a deranged person? A dream lapsed into while unconscious during the operation? The game does not explain beyond showing your character "awaken" to "reality" at the end as the nameless Doctor operates on you and says that you survived phase one, hinting at a sequel when he tells offscreen individuals (or the player's character) to prepare for "phase two." I know that there is a sequel on the DS called Dementium II, but it has yet to be remastered and ported from the DS to the 3DS and thus I have not played it yet. I would personally love to continue the series and discover new plot revelations.
Also, as referenced before, mild puzzles appear in between all the exploration and shooting, providing a welcome respite from depleting your ammunition.
Conclusion
Dementium Remastered is, besides Resident Evil: Revelations (which I also own), perhaps the only horror game for the 3DS that I can think of. As such, it stands out even if it wouldn't among other horror titles designed directly for the 3DS. Remembering an impactful DS classic from 2007 invoked nostalgia that recalled my early days of gaming long ago. But the experience would simply not compare to a horror game created for modern handhelds or consoles. This is clearly a 10 year old DS game ported to a more powerful system, but it is still enjoyable for fans of the original.
Still, there were hindrances to what could have been a better game. The brevity of the game was a notable aspect that could have been improved in this remaster, as I completed the game in around four hours. Some extended or new levels could have enhanced the duration and the replay value. Also, as mentioned before, the environment could have been varied along with the enemy models to provide more variety.
But this rerelease still offers several hours of enjoyment, suspense, and chills. $14.99 could be a rather large price for so short an experience, but at least the game was remastered well and has an intriguing premise.
Now I'm almost tempted to go purchase Moon Chronicles, another first person shooter from Renegade Kid--and another remastered DS game later released digitally for the 3DS. A port of a game called Moon, Moon Chronicles adds episodes available through DLC and may even contain new levels. Anyway, I certainly hope Dementium II also receives remaster treatment and appears on the 3DS eShop sometime this year!
Content
1. Violence: Despite the content warning for "explicit" violence and gore when the game loads, there is no gore I remembered. Vanquished enemies vanish into a smoky outline of blood.
2. Terror: Some people may find the atmosphere and several of the enemies disturbing or frightening.
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