Shadows of the Damned (Xbox 360)
Shadows of the Damned is a bit like what you might get if you asked a teenage boy to make a game. Its main character is a leather jacket wearing badass who wields weapons adorned with a metal skull and blasts the demons of Hell to bits while bragging about his own strength. In the wrong context or with the wrong creators on board, this style could have been a bit too over the top or juvenile. This is a game that calls the default pistol the Boner and has it upgrade into the absurdly long-barreled Big Boner by calling an adult hotline… but here all these elements seem to come together well. It is definitely indulgent when it comes to extreme violence and adolescent humor, but it embraces it unironically and in such an unabashed manner that it feels neither mean-spirited nor too caught up in its own trappings, and this is definitely helped by the game not losing its focus on creating an enjoyable gameplay experience to match its presentation.
Garcia Hotspur is the game’s focus, the demon hunter reveling in his work and spouting out both one-liners and angry epithets as he faces off with the foes he finds in Hell. He seems just as likely to indulge in something weird but fun as he is to be furious about what he’s facing, but it’s his interactions with his gun that really make him a good fit for the game’s plot structure. Johnson is a skull who escaped from Hell and now takes on the shapes of Garcia’s different weapons, his subdued but jovial sarcasm and wit playing off of the fiery Garcia well while also being a good conversational partner for him when the game wants to relay important information or crack a joke. Our other important players in this plot are Fleming and Paula. Fleming is the Lord of Demons, and by capturing Garcia’s girlfriend Paula he baits the demon hunter into plunging into the depths of Hell in the hopes Garcia will either die along the way or be converted to his side. Paula is unfortunately a bit of a weak link in the game. She is mostly there to play a “damsel in distress” role, but even though she does have a few moments of deeper characterization and importance, Fleming is constantly tormenting Garcia with images of Paula suffering all throughout the adventure. Eventually you have to become numb to them because they are far too frequent and pretty formulaic, this attempt at the strengthening the player’s motivation losing its edge in one area where the game does take its self-indulgent style too far.
Hell itself is packed with plenty of character though, the underworld presented with plenty of unique oddities and interesting variety to ensure it works both from an aesthetic point of view and as a constantly shifting gameplay environment. Shadow of the Damned’s Hell is the kind of place where gates aren’t just locked, they’re held shut by the faces of babies who won’t open them until you feed them brains, eyeballs… or strawberries. It’s the kind of afterlife where grimy dark swamps and a glowing neon district devoted to lust coexist without feeling like they’re entirely different worlds, and while it doesn’t ascribe a sin to each location, a large Gothic city in Hell feels as fitting as a library because the underworld is a place with many purposes and many different characters in charge of its subsections. Every now and then you’ll learn some new quirk about the place from Johnson that, thanks to his casual delivery of fun facts about flaying people, softens the horror and allows it to be humorous. It’s the kind of underworld where you can find a district of the city soaked in blood and populated by depraved cannibals and later encounter a friendly half-demon shopkeeper named Christopher who talks like a hillbilly and is surrounded by flowers and neither feel out of place at all.
The humor and horror are well-balanced, but it is by focusing heavily on the gameplay and action that Shadows of the Damned avoids being solely reliant on its tone and world-building. The underworld is filled with demons who will try and rush Garcia in groups, later areas in the game mixing in stronger baddies to make the fights require more strategy and dodging than just blasting whoever is nearest to you. There is a big focus on targeting the right part of the body with the regular humanoid monsters, the generic baddies even encouraging you to hit their head with your shot for an instant kill while others have different weak spots or wear armor you need to break off. The ammo is kept limited to encourage skillful shots rather than abundant ones save for moments like the boss fights where you’ll need a lot of it and certain types to wear down this bigger health bars, but there are more options than just firing on the right area to take baddies down.
Garcia’s gun has a few different modes. The pistol is your standard useful option, able to do plenty of work even on tougher foes and mixing accuracy with a steady firing speed. If you want to get in and do damage without spending ammo though, you can turn Johnson into a torch, the basic swing good for getting demons off of you but the charge swing an instant kill on weaker foes. If something is strong though, you might want to chew through their health quickly with the machine gun option, or if you want to blast apart something too close to you, the shotgun will do immense damage despite its slow firing rate. Beating bosses will gradually give your weapons new firing methods and collecting red gems will allow you to upgrade both your weapon stats and things like your health. White gems allow you to buy things like ammo and red gems from Christopher, and Garcia’s health is actually pretty easy to maintain since recovery is tied to the fairly abundant but also purchasable alcoholic drinks scattered around Hell.
Every weapon has a good feeling of strength behind it, partially because the game loves to reward a shot with a bloody spray. Shadows of the Damned isn’t a one trick pony though, so many fights and exploration moments feature puzzle elements that mostly tie to a darkness mechanic. If a part of Hell is covered in shadow, you will gradually be drained of energy, health soon being at risk if you don’t find energy restoring hearts or clear the darkness away. When inside the darkness you often need to find the goat heads with candles on them and fire your light shot at them, this ability seeing a lot of play in doing things like breaking down the dark barrier that protects some enemies and stunning certain foes to open them up for damage. Navigating between the darkness and light areas is a frequent mechanic, enemies specifically trying to trigger it, others creating bubbles of it until they’re defeated, and those wearing the darkness being invincible until you’ve hit them with your light bullet. It’s a proper level of pressure applied when the darkness rolls over an area and the game keeps using it to new effect like having gauntlets where you need to briefly hold it back with fireworks or mazelike areas where you need to first open up the path to the goat head to find relief.
Unfortunately, the game’s boss fights, which could have combined the darkness and combat mechanics into highlight moments, end up some of the weakest moments. They have plenty of style to them, fitting the odd and gory tone of this version of the underworld, but most of them have patterns that are easy to identify and exploit and their use of darkness is very reserved rather than overly challenging. They can deal some heavy damage if you aren’t dodging or hitting obvious weak points, but your ease of healing makes it hard to lose as well. They often include some sort of gimmick to try and stand out, such as the man who chases you through the marketplace or the giant crow man who flies around its battle arena, but fights can sometimes end up long rather than challenging as you need to keep up with the gimmick and then take advantage of small vulnerability windows. They certainly look interesting and the story-book style used to tell the player their backstory and why they’re so important in Hell make them more memorable, but the interesting build up might also contribute to how big a letdown the actual confrontation ends up being.
More interesting shifts from the norm come in outright changes to the core gameplay. Shadows of the Damned has quite a few moments where it plays in a very different manner, and while they aren’t too well constructed if viewed independent of the rest of the experience, they’re an interesting deviation that is enjoyable enough to engage with for a while. Controlling a giant chandelier as you ascend up a monster filled shaft, flying through a side-scrolling shoot ’em up style level where you have infinite ammo and collect power-ups, and being chased by a crazed version of Paula all feel starkly different from the rest of the game despite their simplicity, and perhaps it’s best they aren’t pushed too far. They explore enough of their style before sending you on your way, and by not getting distracted too often, the game can mix a hearty helping of regular play with strange new ideas like a place full of rotating Tetris-block like platforms. Much like the general aesthetic of the game, the happy embrace of these ideas gives the game more character and appeal, even if they are mostly just decent in design.
THE VERDICT: Shadows of the Damned revels in its bloody violence, crass humor, punk style, and over the top action, and it all comes out pretty good because it’s unafraid to be what it wants to be. The aesthetic makes progress enticing as you want to see where this odd game will go next, and its indulgences in different gameplay genres provide a unique break from the enjoyable shooting action even if they are a bit simplistic. It’s a game oozing with character that isn’t entirely dependent on it because of the strong action and puzzle solving foundation, but at its biggest moments like boss fights it can come up a little short. However, by refusing to shy away from its absurd and over the top ideas, Shadows of the Damned still finds itself exciting and unique throughout.
And so, I give Shadows of the Damned for Xbox 360…
A GOOD rating. For a game that feels so uncompromising, it is a bit of a surprise to read that Creative Producer Shinji Makami of Resident Evil fame and the auteur Suda 51 as Writer/Executive Producer both did have their ideas reined in by the publisher. Plenty of the character they wanted to inject into the product still made it through without becoming overbearing though, absurdity and intense action coming together in a package that continues to bring fun gameplay ideas and strong humor to the table. Gunfights with the demons of hell make for some satisfying action and the darkness mixes well with both it and the puzzles of Hell so things never get too plain or brainless, but its boss fights are unfortunately weak as they mix these elements together in a fairly generic and easily overcome way. The breaks into strange new gameplay styles are interesting for being there but are too basic to really enhance the overall experience, but they embody Shadows of the Damned’s attitude on chasing whatever concept it can think of to keep things fresh and mentally engaging, all while making straightforward jokes about Hell being torturous and lewd jokes that are almost too direct to even classify as innuendo.
Shadow of the Damned has a scattered vision for what it should be, and this actually ends up working in it favor more than it hurts. It has humor and then it has horrific imagery right beside it, it has powerful gun play and then a thoughtful puzzle, but it also has simplistic boss fights and new gameplay styles that rely on being different over being well crafted. Shadows of the Damned can keep your interest though because even when it’s doing something poorly or lacks a bit of imagination, you never know what it could whip out when it shifts to the next concept it’s choosing to embrace without any trepidation.