Look up major events in 2011 and there’s some world-changing stuff… and some not so world-changing stuff. Shadows Of The Damned’s Xbox 360/PS3 release may slip into either camp, depending on whether you liked it back in the day or not. It’s a third-person action adventure where two famous video game folks joined forces: No More Heroes’ Suda51 and Resident Evil’s Shinji Mikami. And to my knowledge, it’s considered a bit of a cult classic.
So, having played Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered after never experiencing the original, do I think it’s any good? If you were a fan of the OG, there’s no doubt you’ll like it. If you’re coming in as a newbie, I think it’s refreshing in the sense it’s a trim throwback with some interesting ideas and middling-to-good execution. But its whole schtick isn’t only a product of its time – it’s actually downright yucky.
You’re Garcia Hotspur, a hot-blooded biker lad whose arms are covered in tattoos and his hair slick with gel. Right from the get-go, his girlfriend Paula is kidnapped from the hotel they’re staying in and dragged into the underworld. Such is Garcia’s love for Paula that he flings himself into the nether portal with one thing on his mind: rescuing her. Thankfully he doesn’t need to rely on his bare fists, because he has a magical gun called… Johnson.
Besides being the first of many dick jokes, Johnson is a posh yet wise-cracking skull that acts as a guide through the underworld – which itself is more than just some pools of lava, or a river lined with ghosts. It’s a journey through gothic streets, an oppressive forest, a hellish dimension, some dingy libraries, grimy sewers, and more. It’s actually a rather characterful depiction of a demon realm, if also a procession of primary-coloured areas typical of the era.
And since Resi veteran Mikami worked on the game, Shadows has you control Garcia in a typically Resi way – prior to the remakes, anyway. It’s from an over-the-shoulder perspective, with tank movements and laser sight aiming. A lot of the combat’s tension is driven by the pressure of lining up your shots as demons shamble towards you, and it’s elevated by Garcia’s inability to move while doing so.
And thanks to the influence of No More Heroes’ Suda51, your journey through the underworld keeps you guessing. One of the game’s key gimmicks is the demons’ ability to conjure the darkness, clouding you in an alternate reality that gradually knocks your health bar as you sit within it. Demons, though? They thrive within its cloak, gaining an impenetrable skin that makes them impossible to kill. To counter it early on, you need to use Johnson’s light shot, an alternate fire option that lets you escape the darkness by finding and shooting nearby goat head statues. Doing so clears up the fog and voila, the demons become killable.
Throughout the story, the gimmick deepens. Suddenly the goat statues might be replaced by red veins that lead to crackable orbs. You might need to light fireworks, their explosions giving you temporary respite. Maybe there’s a massive hand spewing darkness and you’ll need to dip in and out of dark zones to find the right path to close it. There’s even weird anglerfish/slug hybrids that can help you traverse dimly lit spots.
The variety on offer keeps things from becoming stale, and I like how exploration is largely a bunch of arcade scenarios spliced together. Sometimes they have very little cohesion, but by virtue of the game’s bonkersness they end up kinda just working out.
If all the shooting and complete lack of scares didn’t make it obvious, Shadows is very much an action game first and a horror game (very distantly) second. One where 99% of your time will be spent shooting armoured demons, skittery bastards, big brutes, and bizarro bosses with clearly labelled red gems on their bodies. Beat those bosses and you’ll unlock new weapon modes for Johnson, who’ll be able to transform and upgrade into genuinely exciting new toys: an assault rifle that locks onto multiple enemies, a shotgun that loads multiple skull slugs, and a revolver that fires sticky means. All of which are useful in certain situations and deliver a lovely mulching of the flesh when their bullets connect with the baddies.
Despite the variety on offer, though, I can’t help but feel like the game’s stop-and-shoot rhythm plateaus quite quickly and rarely soars to any great heights. I think it’s because the darkness gimmick forever piles on the pressure and feeds its way into a lot of the fights, so it didn’t take long for me to get tired of racing to find the goat’s head or the orbs or whatever to stop my health being leeched. All of this compounds with the labour-intensive tank aiming, which injects tension into some of the more horror-leaning encounters but becomes a bit tired when you’re forever facing off against streams of nasties.
Worse, even some absolutely perfect shooting wouldn’t save Shadows from its biggest problem: it’s just really icky. While Shadows deserves some credit for hows its representation of Mexican culture – including the protagonist being of Mexican descent – avoids the usual stereotypes, it’s also wrapped up in gross misogyny and the crass humour of a terminally unfunny twelve-year-old. Garcia’s partner Paula, for instance, isn’t just the powerless damsel in distress, but is relentlessly hung out as lingerie-clad eye candy. There’s one point where you enter a pleasure district and you sigh inwardly, as Johnson comments on how he’s essentially ‘used’ these women in the past. You jump through holes (you don’t need me to elaborate) and have no choice but to treat a writhing, topless Paula like a bridge as you enter and exit a succession of realms clearly designed to serve a slobbering male gaze.
Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered will no doubt please fans of the original, as it doesn’t touch the demonic meat and bones of the original besides giving them a bit of a face lift. For those coming in fresh, it’s a fairly good time, but only until you start noticing its nastiness. I respect its zaniness and its double-A feel from yesteryear, but I also despise how its characters and its world portray women. I wish that attitude had been tossed in the bin and ‘remastered’ instead, honestly.