That’s not to say that Dementium is without its fair share of annoyances. For starters, no matter how intuitive the controls may be, shooters like this will always be a bit fiddly to get to grips with on the DS. The save system can also be very frustrating at times. Dying is rarely much fun in any game, but becomes particularly tiresome when it causes you to have to repeat twenty or so minutes of progress (although to be fair most of the game is split into relatively short chapters). Respawning enemies every time you head back into a room also seem like something of a throwback, and can leave you very short on supplies at crucial moments – particularly as you cannot carry health packs around with you. While it may seem slightly cynical, you do have to wonder if features like these were a deliberate inclusion on the developer’s part to pad things out, as the game has a relatively short completion time by FPS standards.

Movement is handled by the d-pad, with the stylus used to look around, similar to the standard mouse-and-keyboard controls utilised by most PC FPSs. The L button shoots, and you’ll be needing that button quite a bit. The bottom screen contains your weapons for easy selection, as well as access to your map and inventory. Health is shown on the bottom screen with a red-amber-green colour-code, as well as by your Heartbeat Monitor. While this last one may sound like an easy method of keeping tabs on Nick Berry, it is actually another way of showing your character’s health level, thus ascertaining which shade of brown your underpants should be. It helps up the ante in the game’s scarier moments, and also serves the purpose of providing the player with a relatively large area to move the stylus around in, without accidentally holstering your gun and leaving you fending off hordes of putrid corpse-monsters using nothing but a torch.

Speaking of which, use of your torch awkwardly straddles the divide between “handy” and “pain in the anus”. It is an absolute necessity to help you find your way, as the oppressive gloom shrouds entire corridors and contains who-knows-what monstrosities. But your trusty flashlight cannot be used in conjunction with any sort of weapon, leaving you with the dilemma of needing it to find the enemy, yet having to put it away in order to kill the bugger (although this is cleverly subverted when you encounter killer insects, which run away when light is shined on them). Unless our protagonist is suffering the loss of an arm – which wouldn’t be altogether surprising given the blood and body-parts scattered around the dingy halls – why can he not hold a torch in one hand and a big stick/bread knife/small gun in the other? You could argue that this serves to further up the tension in a survival-horror kind of way, but it feels contrived and slightly archaic.

In spite of some medium-sized annoyances, there are no game-breaking problems here, and there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had for players who like a sprinkle of terror on their gaming pie. Along with GTA: Chinatown Wars, Dementium just goes to show that there is an adult market for DS software and, as long as they are of a similar quality to these two examples, gamers from this more mature demographic should be very satisfied indeed.

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