The dark makes everything beyond the immediate surroundings unknown and when you’re aware that there’s something hostile in that inky blackness, you’re going to start to feel tense when you can’t see what the threat is. I can completely understand why the developer might have felt that it was a good idea after all, one of the most common fears is fear of the dark. This is a frustrating, irritating mechanic. So you can imagine what happens when you have a gun and want to shoot at an enemy from a safe distance away – you’re either firing precious bullets into the emptiness of space and hoping they connect, or you’re going to have to let the enemy get too close to you (and likely damage you), just so you can see what you’re fighting against. This means that in order to fight an enemy, you need to switch between the torch (so you can see) and the weapon (at which point you can’t see any longer). Unfortunately you can’t use the torch and another item at the same time. So it’s a good thing that you have a torch. The feature that lets Dementium down so badly is the fact that it’s so dark it’s almost impossible to see around without a torch. You can read our review of that one here. Related reading: The developer, Renegade Kid, was also behind the Moon Chronicles games. Even more unfortunately, the remastered version of it on the 3DS doesn’t fix that one issue, and so, while the game looks great on the console and makes good use of the 3D effect, it is an intensely frustrating game to play.

It’s rare for a single feature to really let down a game, but unfortunately Dementium: The Ward, one of the few attempts to do a classical survival horror experience on Nintendo’s handhelds in recent years, is an example of that.

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