Jools Whatsham - Dementium: The Ward (2007)

 

Composer: Jools Watsham
Console: NDS
Game Release Date: 2007-10-26
Bootleg Release Date: 2020-11-02
Ripper: mpacz99
Runtime: 44:05, 26 Tracks

I hope everyone had a happy and enjoyable Halloween. There wasn't much going on at my place. Played a lot of horror and dark video games, went shopping for pumpkins to use for cooking, did some writing, had pumpkin cheesecake ice cream, and went for a late-night drive across my neighborhood. There were no trick-o-treaters although I did have candy available. It must have been the pandemic, but it was eerily quiet and dark that night. I also listened to a lot of horrorcore, dark ambient and some phonkstyle. Didn't dress up but that's alright. I didn't have anywhere to be anyways. And, on the Sunday, RYM had a huge update. It was like Christmas morning. All in all, I had a really good time. 
Today’s soundtrack is for the 2007 horror FPS, Dementium: The Ward. I don't remember how exactly I found this one all the way back in 2009. I was most likely looking for NDS FPSs and this game caught my eye. I remember also looking at the one moon-based FPS, but I didn't like its controls. Regardless, I played through the game back in 2009 and beat it sometime that year.

 
As stated, this is a survival horror FPS that was released for the NDS and years later, the 3DS eShop (remastered). Dementium was developed by Renegade Kid.

The game follows a patient in a psychiatric ward, and he suffers through a nightmare. He wakes up, the door to his room open and the ward unusually quiet. Unsure of what is happening he gets up and begins to investigate. 

If it seems bland, I assure you it is one of those games that gets crazy plot wise as it progresses. Now that I think of it the games design is kind of like The Evil Within but came out way earlier. 
In my professional opinion, the best part of the game are the bosses. From a huge flesh-like humanoid with a cleaver for a hand to wheelchair bound WW1-looking patient with a gatling gun the game features insane enemy and boss design. I loved the final boss design and fight. It's one of my favourite boss fights in all of horror games. 

When I played it was one a physical NDS so I can't attest to playing it on computer but the 3DS version is still up if you want to try that. Alternatively, if one can set up an emulator with it then I recommend using Desmume X432R so you can get crisp and detailed upscaling. 

The game was developed by Renegade Kid, a Texas based studio that was shut down in 2016. It was never a big studio and had only had 2 employees for a good time. Jools Watsham, one of the founders of the studio did a lot of work for this game and is credited as composer, designer and director. I am sure he did even more as well. They did an excellent job with the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
As a result of the NDS sound card the audio is lobit sounding. Personally, the lobit quality only made the music so much enjoyable. This is the only lobit ambient release I am aware of, plus it was made back in 2007. Like video game composer, Ian Stocker has been doing lately, releasing the uncompressed OSTs, maybe Jools will do the same?

The music is dark ambient and horror synth mixed into this infernal sound. This rip was made by youtuber mpacz99 and the tracks made available by him. With how lobit the soundtrack is it is pointless to have in a higher quality. The quality is 128>kbps with it ranging from 50 to 80kbps. While mpacz99 tagged most of the tracks he left 3 listed as unknown tracks because he did not know where they are from. Being many, many years since I played Dementium I have no idea where these appear. If anyone does do not hesitate to contact him. I downloaded the playlist and tagged appropriately. 

And that concludes a very spooky October. Next week we will resume regular programming. 

Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUvVGRaRjJLNlIjNkF6QXhTYU4wYmNsclJqM3Vib18yQXZpZ2VkUkc2V2RUMUFocFNuanF3VQ==
mpacz99's YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAxtRRYkz-zU4rmSaGWSLo1hgZ506vy6
p@ss: plaguedoctor