“It’s not very often that you’ll come across a DS game that isn’t afraid to splash the screen with gore and dismemberment. While buckets of blood alone aren’t guaranteed to result in a great and creepy game, 2007’s Dementium: The Ward made a strong case for taking a trip to the dark side on the handheld. Venturing through the grim, oppressive hallways of an atrocity-infested mental institution with a cheap flashlight and an arsenal of deadly implements was an eerie and entertaining experience. The original was an ambitious first-person survival horror game done mostly right, but a few design issues–chief among them a poorly implemented save system and repetitive level structure–bogged down the short, grisly adventure. Dementium II tightens up the gameplay, fixes a lot of the frustrating elements that hampered the first game, and brings the horror-infused action to some interesting new locations.”
Check out the full review here at GameSpot.
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“You have to hand it to the guys at Renegade Kid – they’ve managed to elevate disturbing to an art form. Exhibit A: the box art for the developer’s upcoming horror-drenched follow up to its first-person survival horror experiment Dementium: The Ward. It features a close-up shot of some poor bastard screaming in terror, though his cries are clearly muffled by the human hand that’s ripping its way out of his own mouth and clawing at his eyes. Amazing. Judging from our recent hands-on time with Dementium II, good things are on the way. Particularly if you like you handheld gaming sessions served up with a slab of raw, bloody meat.”
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“Unlike PC gamers and the rest of the console gaming community, Wii purists have been starving for high-quality first-person shooters. They’ve suffered through Red Steel, a glut of tired WWII-themed shooters and a few other major disappointments in their quest for blissful headshot salvation. After years of roaming listlessly through the parched desert of FPS mediocrity, a game like The Conduit offers a certain measure of relief. Yes, if you’re thirsty enough, even stale, gritty canteen water can taste like Evian.”
“NecroVisioN is a moderately sexy-looking game, both in terms of its dark, depressing environments and the mixture of mundane and unholy foes you’ll encounter. Despite occasionally jumping around a bit between overt seriousness and Duke Nukem-like humor, the various settings you’ll battle through are largely on-point. Muscling through barbwire and gassed trenches early on with hellhounds braying in the distance and planes bombing nearby just feels right. Carving through mobs of hellish beasts in later levels is equally thrilling. Thematically, most encounters are pretty gruesome. You’ll frequently come across lots of gore, severed limbs, exploding heads, walking rotten corpses, and ample nastiness. Horror enthusiasts should find the level of hyper-violent dismemberment and splattering innards to be quite satisfactory.”
Nathan Meunier - Freelance Writer / Author / Indie Game Developer 