Written by: Alex

 

 

 

I hate memes and leetspeak, I despise them, but upon hearing about "Shadows Of The Damned" my reaction was an instinctual... OMG! It was as if Hermes herself (among her other duties in Greek myth she was also the god of gaming) had reached in to my mind and plucked my dream team of designing talent and forced them to make a game for me.

 

With Suda 51 the mind behind the twisted Killer 7 creating the story, and gameplay polished by Shinji Mikami, the man responsible for Resident Evil 4, from the outset this was a project that had my attention. To really add the icing to the cake Akira Yamaoka, composer of the haunting Silent Hill score, was also called in to deliver his magic to the project. 

 

Publisher EA certainly seemed to have tapped the well of Japanese talent for this grind house horror title but as I proved with my beer-humus-ramen one drunk night, all my favourite things don’t always work well tighter.

 

 

Ahh, Suda 51 will your perverse Japanese mind ever tire of creating this scatter-minded half-sense? Shadows of the Damned, begins with the simple premise of a demon hunter, called Garcia Hotspur, who has made an enemy of the entire Underworld.

 

Thanks to their apparent inability to kill Garcia the Lord of the Underworld, Fleming, decides to kill his beloved girlfriend Paula instead. Fleming’s plan doesn't stop there however, as his intent is to bring her back to life to kill her again, and again, for the rest of time. His love for Paula drives Garcia after her plunging him in to the dark demon world.

 

 

Luckily Garcia is not alone on his quest to save his beloved as his trusty pal Johnson accompanies him, and there are few more useful partners. An ex-demon himself Johnson not only proves the basis for much of the games puerile penile humour, but also functions as nearly every item required in the game.

 

Existing as a disembodied skull when not in use he is able to create any number of objects to aid Garcia, including a motorbike, guns and a torch. It is this kind of ingenuous character that only works thanks to the games unusual aesthetic, but one that functions perfectly to provide exposition, banter (in what otherwise be a rather depressing experience) and an all important answer to the question ‘where did that motorbike come from?’

 

 

Beautifully the games stories do not stop with the main characters, because all of the boss characters also have their own tale, told very explicitly through storybooks in the world. Walking up to one of these open tomes Johnson or Garcia begins to read almost child like stories about one of the greater demons you face. These are demon’s tales however, so are interlaced with grotesque imagery and (as is a running theme throughout) innuendo. Entertaining diversions from the main game and a clear nod to just how much thought went into the enemies that are faced, rather than them being simply monstrous creations designed to hinder progress.

 

But for all of the thought that clearly has gone in to the construction of the world compared to other Suda 51 tales this somehow feels shallow. This is not necessarily a bad thing; its lack of intricacy making it significantly less off putting to a wider audience and it is still entertaining. But unlike Killer 7 and No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned is very much a case of what you see is what you get. The plot is very explicit so while odd, nothing is left open to interpretation, and the humour is very much limited to dick jokes, without the subtle layers of geek and Japan culture that made his other games so amusing.

 

 

If Suda 51 is responsible for the stories odd twists and turns, then it is clear that Shinji Mikami was chiefly responsible for the gameplay. But while Shadows of the Damned does draw heavily on Resident Evil 4’s third-person mechanic Mikami has refined many elements of the system, incorporating elements from recent Western titles making it instantly familiar to any one who has played a modern third-person shooter.

 

 

Despite how accustomed most will be to these controls there are still a lot of Japanese elements to the game. When not running and gunning, Shadows of the Damned follows the classic Resident Evil format of running around the world to find keys, hunting out collectables and shooting enemy’s bright red weak spots. And to top all this off, there is something in the way Garcia moves that doesn't feel quite as connected as in a Western developed title.