Developer: Memetic Games
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platform: Windows
Dementium II HD – Review
Dementium II HD is the latest installment of Memetic Games and Digital Tribe, it’s a title that was earlier released for the Nintendo DS but later reworked and upgraded as a PC game. It received a lot of praise on the Nintendo DS, let’s find out what the PC version has to offer!
Story
Little context is or story is provided throughout the game, it’s all a bit murky. You wake up in an insane asylum after you had some serious brain surgery. Rumor has it that you killed your wife and kid, but have you? While trying to escape this asylum you constantly find little postcard left by… yourself.
It looks like this brain surgery wasn’t an ordinary surgery though, it seems like the doctor has evil plans. While progressing through the levels, you constantly find yourself swapping between reality and a realm infested with monsters. Are you insane after all?
Graphics
Customization in this game features a simple “Fastest to beautiful” slider, a Vsync option, change of resolution and a windowed/full screen slider. Even though the slider says beautiful, it really isn’t. I can’t imagine what the game would look like on fastest and I didn’t even want to test it.
Dementium II HD is in no way “HD”. It’s just an upgrade of the Nintendo DS version, and not a great one. Graphics are pretty poor, there is no attention to detail and blood particles are horrible. The things that are worth mentioning are the cinematics and cut scenes, they are pretty cool and aren’t as horrible as the rest of the game.
Sound
The music in this game isn’t too great. There’s always a dull peaceful music in the background when running around inside the asylum and from the second a monster starts attacking you, a combat music starts. Not only is this very irritating, a good horror game should have its music building up as the tension rises as well.
Even though this might sound bad, there’s really no other option. The combat is very fast and the game works with a zoning system. By the time the music would build up, your enemy would be dead. So I kind of understand why they’ve gone with this approach. It’s something that used to be done in old-school games but if a game wants to compete at the top it really shouldn’t be done like this anymore.
Sound effects are subpar. It almost seems as the monster and gun sounds were made a decade ago. The guns don’t sound good and the monsters aren’t scary in any way.
Gameplay
As with any game, it all comes down to gameplay. Gameplay can make or break a game even if all the rest fails, but this boat is already drowning and there is no way to make it float again.
Controls are pretty basic, moving, running, crouching, etc. All controls can be remapped in the options menu. There, you can also change the mouse sensitivity and invert it. Controllers are also supported, which is always nice.
The game is played in first person and the HUD consists of a minimap, health/antidote bar and a weapon selection. The game might be first person, but actually hitting things is a nightmare. Hit detection with both melee and ranged weapons are horrible, sometimes you can stab next to a monster and kill it, other times you are standing there stabbing it in the face and nothing happens.
There is a large weapon variety in the game though, there are 10 different weapons, most of them are pretty useless but others are necessary to kill certain monsters or go through some doors. One kind of monster can only be killed with the flamethrower for example, which is pretty hard because it has the range of a match stick.
Guards in the game seem to be really tough, when you shoot them with a gun, they don’t even twitch or have recoil. They also have no line of sight, so whenever you come around a corner they are already aiming at you. Monsters can also be easily outrun by sprinting (you can sprint endlessly), so it’s pretty hard to die to regular monsters.
Boss fights are a bit less brainless and actually require some thinking instead of just running to them and attacking, you’ll have to analyze their attacks and look for weak spots in order to make it safe to the next chapter.
The minimap I talked about earlier is pretty handy, but oh so inaccurate. It colors the rooms or sections which you have visited (same goes for the map), colors doors which can be entered and doors which are locked. White doors usually require a special item or tool to be able to enter them.
Conclusion
Dementium II HD is a game that was simply released too late. Graphics and gameplay feel and look like they were a couple of years ago and simply can’t compete with modern day horror games like Amnesia, F.E.A.R. or Dead Space. If you’re looking for a horror game, I suggest you look somewhere else. This game may have been a good title for the Nintendo DS, but it’s far from good for the PC.
Dementium II HD – Review,
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