This first person adventure is a good solid release, filling a gap in the DS line up. The game looks great, with smooth, fast turning and well-drawn sprites showing off the portable graphics nicely. The somewhat generic plot plays out in a twisted hospital inhabited by gruesome, fleshy monsters apparently just waiting around to kill you. Combat is difficult enough to make the gradual exploration of the darkened, ruined wards tense and claustrophobic, with some challenging touch-based puzzles offering a nice change of pace at times. Think Silent Hill, in a hospital, on the DS and you won’t be miles off.
But while that sounds good on paper, in practise it’s not a very happy combination. The small size of the screen means the game struggles to create the immersion this kind of horror needs to truly work. The controls can charitably be described as awkward, with the stylus used for turning and selecting menu items while the D-pad moves you around. With only one hand to support the DS it quickly becomes uncomfortable and makes changing between your trusty flashlight and your (even trustier) weapons slow, dangerous and unreliable.
The save game system of pre-set checkpoints isn’t ideal for mobile gaming either. In this case, it leaves you unable to revisit sections where you may have missed vital items or clues without retracing your steps through large chunks of the level that have repopulated themselves with nasties. Battling your way back again (hopefully without dying this time) becomes a tedious process; and the prospect of endlessly repeating it terrifies more than anything the designers have come up with.
The DS is short on first person titles with this level of polish, and also on quality horror games, but maybe there are good reasons why – on any other console, this game would work better; here it only merits a very average 5 out of 10.
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