When Dementium: The Ward came out in 2007, it certainly had its flaws, but it showed off the power of the Nintendo DS and proved that a psychological horror could be done, though maybe not perfectly, on a handheld device.

Dementium II (no subtitle) shows that the developers have listened to the complaints that the previous game garnered and used them to make the game better in many ways. The result is a spooky first-person horror experience that might actually make you question turning the lights off.

You begin the game as William Redmoor, awoken from the radical medical operation that caused the events in the first game. It soon becomes apparent that things have not gotten better, however, as insanity begins to spill into the real world, forcing ol' William to pick up a weapon again and once again struggle to stay alive and sane.

Though the game takes place in the real world for the most part, there are times that you'll be brought into another world, one filled with blood, metal and monsters. It's an actually chilling place that works wonders and making you want to turn down the sound, as the audio is of the cacophonous variety, unsettling and disturbing without being annoying. It works well.

The story of the game is not particularly deep, and like with most survival horror titles, gets told through the medium of newspaper clippings, diaries, notes, postcards written by yourself, and other bits of media that you'll find scattered around the Bright Dawn Treatment Center and the nearby town of Perf.

The game tends to lack the same feel as its prequel, though, since except for the question of the monsters' appearance, there's no real mystery or purpose to the game's story. You're mostly moving forward for the sake of moving forward, rather than having a definite goal in place. Though this is not the same as feeling directionless, it still feels like perhaps some reason for wanting to actually find a red key to fit into the red door would've been nice.

You'll also find weapons, a bunch of them. The game controls well, using the stylus to look and the directional pad to move, which frees up your thoughts for shooting, bludgeoning, stabbing, and burning the various monstrosities around you. A decent variety of monstrosities too, though for the most part the strategy for taking them down is either 'run up and stab them to death' or 'stay your distance and shoot them to death' with very few complications. The boss battles are bigger, and add a bit of variety to the mix, but there are few of them.

The game primarily suffers from the same problem of length that the first one did, but it solves many other problems. Enemies no longer respawn when you leave and enter previously-cleared rooms, for example. There are multiple save points throughout levels, not just at the beginning of each chapter. But the game is still short, and except for a survival mode that pit you against waves and waves of enemies just to get your combat fix, there's not content to the title.

Dementium II is fairly enjoyable sequel, but still lacks in depth. It actually manages to work in the scare department (to an extent), due to some good audio and impressive graphics for the DS, but it falls a little flat in without much variety or purpose to your goals. It's pretty good for a quick handheld FPS fix, but to ask anything else of it would be insane.