Shadows of the Damned stars Mexican demon hunter Garcia Hotspur, who has to make his way through a stylised vision of hell to save the woman he loves from the demon lord Fleming. As far as plot goes, that’s about as thick as it gets. There’s a bit of character development along the way, but it’s mostly so shallow that you’ll be lucky to wet the tops of your feet. The rest of the game is spent shooting things; there isn’t a single hellish problem that can’t be solved through the use of gun violence, and that’s just fine.
Shadows of the Damned is a collaboration between No More Heroes director Goichi Suda, Resident Evil 4 director Shinji Mikami, and Silent Hill audio director Akira Yamaoka. So we have a strong Japanese development pedigree behind the game.
Shadows of the Damned is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, although the subject matter could easily have taken the game in that direction. Thankfully it hasn’t, and what we are presented with is a warped, twisted, visceral imagining of some sort of hell, heavily laced with tongue-in-cheek adolescent humour.
The vision of hell that the team has created seems to combine many different ideas on what a hellish environment might look like; the result is not entirely unique, but also not blatantly derivative. The visual effects employed convey the sense of disorientation and psychological instability that one might expect when venturing through hell. The level design and art direction leads the game to take place in what looks to be a warped version of a residential landscape; a mash up of great horror settings that one can’t quite place. All-in-all, the setting is decidedly hellish and a weird and interesting place to explore.
The distinctive, enchantingly discordant musical styling of Yamaoka sets a well-placed audio backdrop to the visuals. While the music rarely shines through as a star of the game, it is most certainly a great ingredient for which the game would be worse off without.
Shadows of the Damned immediately strikes one as being eccentric, and perhaps forcefully being weird for the sake of calling itself weird. When you first start playing, the combination of visual effects and gameplay ideas can be a bit confusing, but eventually it all melds together into a rather satisfying gameplay experience.
Gameplay
Garcia Hotspur is a slick Mexican wearing leather pants and a purple leather jacket with a sequined skull on the back. His over the top styling is matched with his tough-as-nails clichéd Mexican personality. His constant companion is a disembodied skull named Johnson, who can transform into a variety of skull themed tools to help Garcia through hell. Johnson will be your guiding light in the form of a torch, your melee weapons, and most importantly, your guns.
The gameplay involves making one’s way through the five acts of the game, killing demons along the way to the many entertaining and varied boss fights. Garcia has three core weapons in his arsenal, essentially highly stylised versions of a pistol, assault rifle, and shotgun. Each gun can also shoot the same alternate – a charged shot of light energy.
One of the core gameplay concepts is that of using light and darkness to your advantage. Demons thrive in darkness, and they have various means of bringing darkness down over the levels. Garcia has a slight immunity, but will eventually take damage in darkness. The gameplay involves juggling between the light and dark areas of the game, as certain demons only take damage in one mode or the other. There are also a number of shooting-based dark/light puzzles sprinkled throughout.
The game starts out a bit slowly as it introduces all these concepts and allows the player to become familiar with the environment, but once things get going, it is well-paced.
The demons are well designed, and there is quite a variety of them to contend with, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Things become particularly interesting when a combination of demon types is thrown at the player; at this point it’s all about well-measured crowd control. The boss battles are all great fun, and the bosses are all unique in some way. The visceral and brutal styling of the bosses gives each their own ‘charm’ and they are great fun to battle with.
Although technically a survival horror game, Shadows of the Damned does a good job of keeping you alive most of the time. I rarely felt challenged to conserve ammo or health – which is fine, because then you can focus on having simple demon stomping fun. Giant health potions in the form of various types of booze are conveniently dotted around. Ammo is also fairly plentiful, and the ammo pickups even regenerate; a concession to those who suck at aiming and squander their ammo.
The upgrade system is powered by gems which are found hidden in crates and barrels, or dropped by demons and their bosses. Garcia can upgrade his weapons, the light shot, the Johnson melee weapon, and his total health. It’s a fairly simple upgrade system but it provides reason to search the nooks and crannies of the levels for pickups.
The game smacks of an arcade-style design, which is quite a lot of fun. Enemies come in waves, and occasionally the only way the pass a tough segment is through a bit of trial and error. Boss battles are a matter of figuring out movement and attack patterns, and gulping down potions to allay any damage taken. The general formula is to shoot the weak-spot until the boss dies. Loading times aren’t too bad for the most part, but occasionally loading an entirely new area does drag on a bit.
One of the most annoying segments of the game occurs about two thirds of the way in when it seems that the developers suddenly had the bright idea to introduce a crummy side-scrolling shooter game. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it didn’t seem poorly cobbled together – as if they ran out of time to develop certain sections of the game fully. Whether or not it was planned from the start, it was a low-point.
Movement controls could have been tighter, and occasionally the aiming is frustratingly implemented. When demons are particularly close, it becomes difficult to aim and bullets seem to pass right through them. Once the player accepts that they will be doing a lot of running away from monsters to clear themselves room in which to shoot, things go a lot more smoothly. Animations in some areas of the game also appear slightly disjointed, but this can largely be ignored in favour of the solid shooting fun.
Conclusion
At the end of the roughly eight-hours’ worth of game, Shadows of the Damned turns out to be a fun and interesting romp through the kind of hell you may not have imagined before. The weak story is largely irrelevant as it’s a peg from which to hang the arcade shooter gameplay. The oddball lead characters might eventually grow on the player by the end of the game. Despite a few rough edges, it is ultimately a fun arcade-shooter experience, with some fun gameplay design elements in a twisted, macabre and humorous setting. If you aren’t going to rush out and buy it at full retail price, then earmark it for a bargain bin purchase when there’s a bit of a gaming drought.
Shadows of the Damned (PS3) << Comments and views
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