Shadows Of The Damned Review

Game: Shadows Of The Damned

Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Available on: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

Survival horror games are usually quite serious affairs. Most use psychological tricks and gore for shock factor whilst using claustrophobia make things tense. These techniques usually result in a fantasic survival horror game and a great addition to the horror genre, but they can also prevent you from finishing a game due to its tense nature (Dead Space 2 is a case in point). Humour is very rarely added to games like these, and if it appears at all, it can be a bit hit and miss, making you wonder if it should have been included at all. It would be nice to have a survival horror game which contains a decent amount of humour to ease the tension and potentially make the game a more enjoyable experience.

Well, into the fray enters Shadows of the Damned. With its development roots tracing back to 2005, this is a survival horror game that was created by Goichi Suda (or Suda51, of Killer7 and No More Heroes fame) and Shinji Mikami, who created the legendary Resident Evil series, among others. But does Shadows of the Damned have what it takes to be a great survival horror title with some decent humour, or is it just a series of images that are neither scary nor funny? Let’s load up our shotguns and find out.

STORY: Garcia Hotspur is a Mexican, whose main job is to eradicate demon hordes from the face of the earth, something he takes great pleasure in doing. Unfortunately for him, his antics have got him noticed by the evil Lord of the Underworld who is known as… Fleming? After slaying one of his demon foes, Garcia is told that his girlfriend Paula has been taken hostage by Fleming. After racing back to his apartment and dealing with some wastrel demons in his path, he walks in to find Paula being hung. As Garcia starts to break down, he is confronted by the Lord of the Underworld and is told that this is only a taste of what Paula is going to receive when he takes her back to hell with him. Fleming wants Paula for himself, and, being the twisted puppy that he is, also wants to do horrible and naughty things to her. As you can imagine, Garcia Hotspur is not going to let this happen, so he chases the fleeing Fleming along with Paula into the Underworld via a portal. From here, Garcia has to journey through the twisted and evil underworld to Fleming’s castle. With the help of his trusty demon sidekick Johnson (who can turn into a series of guns for Garcia at will), he hopes to defeat Fleming and rescue his true love.

In general, the storyline is pretty good, and you feel connected to the characters, genuinely caring about what is going on. You also get back stories (in the form of books) about the bosses in the game, as well as conversations with Garcia and Johnson that give the storyline more depth. Apart from the serious-sounding premise, this game is intentionally hilarious, with a massive amount of unashamed sexual innuendo. Hotspur’s demon guide is called “Johnson” and his handgun is called “Boner”, the latter upgrading to the “Hot Boner”. Shortly after an incident where Johnson listens to a hot and steamy sex phone line (Schwing!), Boner turns into the massive “Big Boner”, a phallic hand cannon that makes Garcia shout “Taste my Big Boner” in his Mexican accent whenever he fires it. (I dare you to try it. Go on!). With these double entendres, jokes and quirky comments,  “Shadows” will have you chuckling away quite often, providing you like that sort of humour. The humour can be a little cheesy at times, but less so than, say, a Roger Moore Bond film. Speaking of films, scattered throughout are several references to the movies that inspired the game (Evil Dead is a prime example),so make sure you keep your eyes peeled for them!

GRAPHICS: Shadows of the Damned is powered by Unreal 3, and although not bad graphically, it is not the greatest looking game to use the engine. There is occasional texture pop-in, and sometimes surfaces do look a bit chunky, but you tend not to mind because the overall design of the game is so wonderful. The Underworld is as you would expect, twisted and gory, yet strangely sexy at certain points. The enemies are completely fucked-up, but in a highly detailed way, something that would be terrifying if the games humour hadn’t countered the feeling of dread. The main characters are well designed and well rendered, with Garcia looking like a cross between a battle-scarred demon hunter and a prince.

Paula is a beautiful damsel in distress who is usually dressed up in something skimpy, so it is genuinely quite disturbing when she suffers a painful indignity and death in the Underworld. At one point, you are in the Underworld’s red light district, when you see a massive rendering of Paula dressed up in lingerie, who dances around suggestively before helpfully bridging a gap that you have been unable to get across using her tits! Later on, however, you see her head get cut off and her face get eaten, things that are all quite graphic to watch. So make sure your kids aren’t watching you play. The only criticism I would make about the character design is that Fleming doesn’t look like the Lord of the Underworld. He looks like a big headed demon with 6 eyes wearing a trenchcoat and holding a pole. You’d have thought with the label of “Lord of the Underworld”, he would be more grand and twisted.

The loading screens are quite entertaining, as a little 2D cartoon pops up, showing Gracia travelling through the Underworld. Later on in the game, this 2D cartoon theme reappears in a side-scrolling shooter mini game, which works quite well. Although this reflection is a nice touch, the loading screens can take a little too long at times, especially considering that some chapters consist of literally only one or two rooms. If there is a big level coming up, it doesn’t matter so much, but to have a battle with only ten enemies in a room followed by yet another loading screen can seem a little endless.

SOUND: Shadows has quite a funky soundtrack. After the first act, you get the opening title, and can rock out with quite a cool track. As you progress, there is a mix of rock and electro pop/jazz which musically, makes the whole affair even more interesting, and shows the creators’ taste in music. You can tell that the developers have put some time and effort into using sound to give the game greater impact. The voice acting that is very well done: snappy, contextually appropriate and funny, although the lip syncing is sometimes a bit off. The enemies sound like they are from hell, with believable grunts and growls that let you know when the enemies are coming, allowing you to get ready to pop some demon heads. Overall, the game’s audio is very well constructed and definitely suits the game in its entirety.

GAMEPLAY: This is a third person “over the shoulder” shooter that plays similarly to the Dead Space series. You aim with the left trigger and, with the help of a laser instead of a reticule, you can shoot your enemies. However, this can get a little tricky at times because headshots are the main way to get a quick kill, meaning that it may be worth turning the sensitivity down to allow for a better aim. That said, when you pull off a head shot it is extremely satisfying, which is probably why the aiming is so tricky to begin with. With practice, you can use headshots to kill enemies quickly whilst saving precious ammo, although if you explore enough you should never really run out. You can walk whilst shooting, but whilst this can assist your aim in many ways, it can hinder it in others, so you really have to think about how you take your enemies out.

There is also a handy function which lets you you press A and turn 180 degrees, enabling you to turn around quickly and attack enemies on your six. Don’t worry if they get too close however, as you can use the melee (B) button when it shows up, and smack them one, before blasting them away. This melee button comes in handy when you are stuck in a corner and faced with loads of enemies ganging up on you, as it allowing you to smack them, before dodging out of the way with the A button and continuing with the slaughter. You can also kill a downed enemy who is still crawling by tapping the X button to perform a brutal kill. When you defeat enemies, they sometimes drop ammo, though they also drop white gems, the currency of the Underworld that allows you to buy items and upgrades. Should you get hit to many times by the hordes of hell, you can replenish your health by finding or purchasing bottles of alcohol of varying strength, because in the Underworld, booze doesn’t trash you liver: it refills your life force.

There are three upgradeable weapons in the game that your demon pal Johnson can transform into. You start off with a shotgun, which is handy for close quarters and confined spaces. There is also the aforementioned handgun (“Boner”, remember?”) and a machine gun that you collect later on. This is good for taking down quick moving enemies. All of these are upgradeable using blue gems that you collect after defeating bosses, and red gems that, along with weapons can upgrade your health. You can either find these red gems in hidden areas or purchase them along with booze and ammo from the half-man-half-demon hick called Christopher, who pops up occasionally as you progress through the Underworld.

As well as normal shooting, you also have a secondary fire option known as the Light Shot. This can be used to stun enemies, but you can also ue it to light up dark areas, by shooting it at lamps and removing “Darkness”, a dark blue/purple force field that starts to take your soul away (via a gauge around your life bar) when you are within in its area, also making any enemies invulnerable to your attack. You can either temporarily remove it by finding firework towers to enable you to use the Light Shot to remove darkness from enemies and kill them, or you must find a golden goat head and fire the Light Shot at it to finally stop the darkness from engulfing that area again. However, sometimes you just have to run through a darkness filled area as there is no means of removing it. At other times, you can use the darkness to your advantage, as you will need to explore it to find switches which open doors that are only shown within the darkness, making for some tricky puzzles.

The boss battles in this game are always unique and very well designed. It is never usually a case of just shooting the damn thing, as you have to figure out the precise way to kill them. You occasionally get a pointer from Johnson, but most of the time you have to figure it out for yourself, which can make it quite challenging but satisfying when you eventually conquer the bosses, who are always huge, fearsome and amazing-looking.

Shadows of the Damned’s gameplay is quite an enjoyable experience overall, as it’s very well designed and occasionally challenging. There are some problems with Garcia’s movement that can be a little awkward, especially when you have to run away, something that at certain points you will have to do. This is where you will die for the most part, which can get a bit infuriating. The other problem with the gameplay is that although there are challenging parts to it, the majority of the game can actually be quite easy, and you will only die due to the movement issues. So if you want a more hardcore challenge, it may be worth playing first time on the hardest difficulty setting.

LONGEVITY: In its entirety, Shadows of the Damned will only take you ten or so hours to finish on normal difficulty, but you cannot continue again after completion with all your equipment, as you would expect in most games of this genre. After finishing, you will probably want to play through on the hardest difficulty, as the experience is very good fun and very amusing, making you want to find any jokes you may have missed. So you can probably have this smashed out in about two to three days, obtaining all the achievements/trophies, and still be thoroughly entertained. After that, it will either collect dust on your shelf or be handy for trading in.

VERDICT: Shadows of the Damned is a very good, balls out and cock-in-hand third person shooter that not only mixes humour and horror very well, but is admirably unashamed of itself in any way, shape or form. The horror is very graphic and quite disturbing, something that might make everything very tense perhaps even unplayable, if it wasn’t for the humour that makes light of it all. Although this humour may not be to everyone’s taste, it is a very well written comedic piece with a lot of dick jokes thrown in, and will have most people clutching their sides at some points. There are a few gameplay issues that hamper it slightly but Grasshopper Manufacture have done a sterling job with this, and it will be good to see Garcia “Fucking” Hotspur in another outing in the future. So make sure your Boner is cocked, fully loaded and pointing proudly at the enemy for its next adventure.

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