Most people would consider the idea of Mikami and Suda coming together a match made in heaven, and it is, but sometimes while playing through Shadows of the Damned it feels like this game would’ve fared much better at a lower cost or possibly as a downloadable title.
Shadows of the Damned
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Price: $60.00
Platform: PS3 (reviewed) & Xbox 360
Plus, knowing EA they’re probably going to criticize Grasshopper or gamers for not buying the game when they’re giving it no marketing at all. It’s a shame because Shadows is easily going to be the sleeper hit of this year just as Just Cause 2 was last year, at least for me it was. Well I suppose I should mention that you play as Garcia ‘fucking’ Hotspur and your hot totally not a psycho bitch girlfriend Paula just couldn’t get a hang of things is taken by the demon lord Fleming and it’s your job to show that your endowments are bigger than his by killing him and getting your girlfriend back. The story is your basic Suda recipe with immature writing all over the place, but the surprising thing is that it works quite well. The game is filled with more penis jokes than a gay orgy a bunch of totally heterosexual men partaking in penis jokes, but they’re all worth a good chuckle with the only pun that pulled me out of the game was when Garcia said “I’m a MexiCAN, not a MexiCAN’T”. For fucks sake, your friend is called Johnson he turns into a gun called the Boner, and later in the game he calls a sex-line to ‘satisfy’ himself and becomes the Big Boner. Garcia then proceeds to shout “How does my Big Boner taste?” and “I like spraying my load from my big boner on your face!”. You know a game isn’t going to take itself *that* seriously when this happens.
Your good buddy Johnson can transform into 3 different weapons in the game that are each upgraded by collecting blue gems from boss encounters. Spoilers: Johnson can turn into your basic pistol, shotgun, and rapid-fire rifle. As I said, each weapon is upgraded multiple times through the game and each one brings along upgraded stats and a new alternate fire. The boner becomes the Hot Boner which can fire mines you can detonate, the Teether later becomes the Dentist which can lock-on to enemies for homing shots, and the Skullcrusher becomes the Skullcrusher 9000 and can fire four shots at once or turn all those shots into a handy grenade. When I first started the game the controls felt pretty loose, but after a while I was getting the hang of things and showering demons with hot lead from my boner. Johnson also has a light shot which can be used to stun demons and you can use him while he’s in his torch mode to whack enemies back to give yourself some breathing room.
Shadows of the Damned isn’t without a bit of variety of course. Fleming’s castle has a few moments where you’ll enter his arcade and you’ll be able to win prizes or simply complete an objective. A couple times in an earlier chapter Garcia will be turned into paper and you’ll have to play through a surprisingly fun shoot ’em up level where you will even fight a boss at the end of one of them. The variety was nice, but it really would’ve been helpful if Garcia could have moved a bit faster when you tried to back up since sometimes you’ll need to head backwards after hitting a switch and a snail would’ve made it through the game 3 times by the time Garcia finishes moving backwards. I just wish that the game had kept this sort of variety in a lot more chapters since they really are quite fun and would’ve lightened up things even more.
Quite possibly the big gimmick of the game is the darkness you enter that will continuously sap your health unless you pick up hearts to increase your resistance or simply find a way out. Escape means lighting a goat head with your light-shot, destroying a hand seeping darkness, or just finding the exit of the room. There are some clever puzzles involving the darkness that have you entering a small area of darkness to destroy buttons on doors or to reveal the weak spots on a boss. There are even some enemies that will crawl along the walls and spit darkness on your precious goats, once again coating the area in darkness and requiring you to not only light up the goat again but kill that demon before he can repeat his actions. Some of the later chapters even include giant pube-covered hands that hold onto the goats and won’t come off until you find and destroy their hearts.
I guess the joke of only allowing developers who actually know how to use the Unreal engine works here since it’s pretty obvious when you play the game. Most areas will have some serious texture pop-ins that can take as long as 30 seconds to a full minute for all the textures to finally realize that they’re needed, but that’s besides the fact that everything looks average at best. The game has a great art style, similar to my Alice review, but some effects are just downright ugly and no art style will save that. The first suspect is the fact that EVERYTHING has this weird ‘highlight’ around it which looks like everyone and everything was just turned into the next messiah. Check out the screenshot above. You see that weird ‘glow’ around Garcia’s jacket? Yea that’s not just there because of the lights. It’s ALWAYS there and it’s on enemies and random objects as well.
Another issue is that lights, fire, smoke, explosions, and any other particle effects look incredibly pixilated. This becomes pretty evident once you hit chapter 4 (when you acquire the Big Boner) and each blast from the gun not only releases a cloud of pixilated smoke, but also follows that up with a pixilated explosion where it landed. I honestly couldn’t tell whether this was done on purpose or just incredible laziness. The only effect that I thought looked somewhat impressive where the scan lines that appear when Johnson transforms into a gun. Oh yea, the soundtrack is actually pretty damn good with some slick tracks.
The Final Word
Clocking in at around 7 hours Shadows of the Damned is one hell of a fun ride through an environment we’ve been to multiple times, but not like this. Although as much as I love Suda and Mikami I find it hard to recommend anyone to pay the full $60 for such a short title with no replay value at all, but just know that your money goes towards two guys who really do love making fun games and it shows in Shadows of the Damned.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
