ith Renegade Kid’s new game Dementium: The Ward, survival-horror fans have another reason to fire up the DS. Judging from our hands-on with the game, genre veterans can expect to find a game that pushes the handheld in some impressive ways technologically, while playing it relatively safe in the gameplay department.

Dementium: The Ward starts with a first-person sequence, where the wheelchair-bound player is hastily ushered through a creepy hospital. It’s a dark and bumpy ride, giving players brief glimpses at the horrific creatures lurking in the halls and their bloody victims. After that brief tour, the player temporarily loses consciousness, only to wake up in bed. A quick look-around shows that, unfortunately, you’re still in the same hospital. Getting out isn’t going to be as easy as blacking out.

The game continues from that first-person perspective, highlighting Dementium’s impressive 3D engine. With controls similar to those in Metroid Prime Hunters, players move with the system’s D-pad (or face buttons, for lefties), look around by dragging the stylus on the screen and attack or use items with the trigger buttons. The action is smoother than cardiac tissue, and it looks beautiful. Well, it looks as beautiful as dimly lit, blood-drenched corridors possibly can on the DS. Things do get a bit grainy when you get too close, but it’s by no means a deal-breaker.

There’s a brief hand-holding section, where players get a chance to acclimate themselves to the controls and other in-game features. After getting the notebook item, for instance, players can use it to solve a basic puzzle. A memo gives the combo for a keypad, which is a perfect time to put pencil to paper. It’s an easy process, too, with a quick tap bringing up the four-paged journal and another tap putting it away. Entries can be erased easily, too, so it’s easy to revise notes on the fly.

At first, your character is armed with nothing but his wits. After a few minutes, you’ll have a flashlight and police baton. Just to keep things interesting, you’re only able to wield one item at a time. Fortunately, switching items is just as easy as writing notes—a quick tap on the appropriate icon quickly swaps one item out for another. While you can’t attack with the flashlight, it does show off Dementium’s impressive lighting effects. We found that the flashlight was a decent default item until you hear the unmistakable scream/hiss/call of an enemy. At that point, it’s time to go on the offensive.

The first enemies we encountered were zombie-like ghouls with exposed hearts and hypodermic needles jammed into their eyes. They’re easy to take down, with a few well-placed baton swings knocking their heads off and eventually battering the unfortunate souls to the floor. We also had the pleasure of running into some jumpy leech-like monstrosities and some uber-buff ghouls who sprayed green fluid from afar. Did we mention that the game is deliciously nasty?

Sound plays an important role in the game, with each of the enemies we encountered making its own distinct noise. For the most part, it’s a great way to get a heads-up on who you’re facing next and switch your weapons accordingly. There are still a few of those “open a door and have an enemy fall right into your face moments” to take players by surprise, but for the most part you’ll know what you’re up against before you can smell its breath. Ammo is plentiful, so if you’re a fan of shooting first and asking questions later, you’ll feel at home in this hospital. Enemies are spread out enough so you’re not constantly wading through crowds, but you’re not all alone, either.

As impressive as the game looks and sounds, it does suffer from an overwhelming degree of familiarity. While the player may not know where he is or how he got there, anyone who’s spent time playing other survival-horror games will get an unmistakable sense of déjà vu. Almost all of the genre standards are present in Redmore Hospital, from the building itself to the wheelchairs to some of the puzzles. The always enjoyable Creepy-Little-Girl-Without-Pupils-Wearing-An-Old-Timey-Dress shows up occasionally, leading the player deeper into the labyrinthine hallways. We’re lucky the game features a solid in-game map system—after a few twists and turns, it’s easy to get lost in the sameness of it all. Once you’ve seen one blood-drenched bedroom or supply-closet-lined hallway, you’ve just about seen them all.

It’s probably just a relic of the genre, but the puzzles quickly veer away from logical, if boring, keycard hunts to bizarre tasks such as finding the combination to a gun locker by counting the eyes of corpses in a nearby morgue or opening up toy pianos by spelling words out on the keyboard. Then again, with undead monsters roaming the halls, it’s hard to fault the puzzles for being unrealistic.

We had a lot of fun during our hands-on time, and we’re definitely interested in spending more time with Dementium. We’re particularly keen on learning more about what the heck is going on within those hospital walls. A few hints are dropped here and there (including some juicy bits about a murder), but other than it being a game where you kill a bunch of monsters, we couldn’t really tell you what’s really going on. Is it a dream? Is someone in some kind of purgatory? Is it—gasp—Hell? Players are going to have to wait until Halloween to find out for themselves, when Dementium: The Ward admits new players.