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.
Renegade Kid has done a great job of listening to both positive feedback and criticism from the first Dementium and implemented a laundry list of changes to make the sequel a much smoother game. Enemies thankfully don’t re-spawn when you return to rooms you’ve already explored. Also, regular save points appear before important events, and there’s now an option to manually save from anywhere. The slightly overhauled interface is another big improvement. You can quickly drag-and-drop equipment directly between your inventory and your hands without having to pause first. And navigating is a lot less tedious now that there’s a constant map integrated into the touch screen.
As an escapee, you have to work with what you can find. Early weapons include a shank, a revolver, and a sledgehammer that can break through boarded up doorways. You can expect a few automatic weapons and other more powerful munitions will become available, and believe us, you’ll need them. Only two monsters carry over from the original game, which means you’ll face a mostly new array of grisly creatures to dismember. The flashlight makes a return, and you can now dual-wield it with single-handed weapons. It’s nice being able to see what’s trying to kill you and fight back at the same time.
Exploring the very early stretches of the near-finished game felt pleasantly familiar but infinitely better than the original. The game’s high creep-out factor is in full-swing here. The biggest “aha” moment came during the first major boss battle where we were stuck frantically jabbing a prison shank into a toothy boss creature with hooks for hands that pressure vomited flesh-eating, screeching maggots bathed in acidic bile from the ceiling down at us. Dementium II has already exceeded out expectations, and you can look for our full report when it releases in February.
Dec 1, 2009
