Insert Dick Joke here.
Shadows of the Damned was originally one of those dream projects where a pairing of developers who were at the top of their game would unite to create magic; a game that would stand alongside the greats. However, while the shadows are certainly damned here, so was the game’s entire development. Shadows of the Damned was created by both Suda 51 (No More Heroes) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil), two of the most creative minds the industry has to offer, not to mention the involvement of Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill). However, Shadows of the Damned would have one of the most troubled developments across the industry, largely due to one man; EA’s (at the time) CEO, John Riccitiello.
A great deal of the development of Shadows of the Damned has been discussed publicly, both by Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami. Both mention that EA would shut down ideas before they were even mentioned, deny script after script, and aim to water down the appeal of what each man had brought to the industry. Shadows of the Damned would end up being an entirely different beast to what Suda 51 had conceived, a game that made him despise John Riccitiello so much that he based a No More Heroes villain after the man, even going so far as spelling the last name exactly as it was. Shadows of the Damned broke Suda 51’s creative spirit and that pain is felt throughout much of this mediocre and uneven experience.
Shadows of the Damned is, at its core, a love story; just one filled to the brim with constant dick jokes. Your gun, called a Boner, also has the name of Johnson and eventually can grow into a long “big boner” during one of the game’s most tedious gameplay segments. Checkpoints are alerted to you by the appearance of “One-eyed William” and nearly every line of dialogue has some sort of phallic reference to it. Shadows of the Damned is a game written for its era, and it shows it across every pixel or line of dialogue, especially during moments where Paula, who you enter hell to rescue, is objectified to hell and back, quite literally. In fact, there is a moment where you’ll have to cross across a massive vision of her in an almost hallucinogenic scenario and traverse over her bare chest and rear end. I honestly wondered how EA even approved this particular moment.
While the game comes with the subtitle “Hella Remastered” there really isn't any work done to illustrate this. The game does run (mostly) at 60fps at 4K on Series X and PS5, 60fps at 1080P on PS4, while the Switch runs at a very inconsistent 30fps. However, apart from four new costumes and a new game+ mode, that is all that has been done here. The same clunky animations, too-zoomed-in combat, and blurry and bland texturing are all here. Honestly, as far as remasters go, it may be the least amount of work I've ever seen done, offering almost no clear differences when seeing the game alongside the original. Even the giant button prompts of the 360 era are here in all their glory. If you've already played and own the original, there is really no reason to invest in this version apart from being able to play it on modern hardware with gimmicks like the Adaptive Triggers or Gyro Pointer via the Switch. For those who have yet to experience this game, It is cheap enough that you could find some fun, but it’s not something I recommend, especially with the number of amazing games that have come out this year and plenty that are about to.
Shadows of the Damned has you playing as Garcia Hotspur, a demon hunter who returns home to find his girlfriend at the mercy of Fleming, the Lord of Demons. Fleming offers Garcia a deal for Paula’s life, but upon refusal, Fleming takes Paula to hell, offering threats to Garcia that he plans to kill her over and over again. Garcia then follows Fleming into hell and is joined by Johnson, a demonic gun he apparently won in a bet. Considering this is a love story as Garcia bets it all to follow her into hell, it’s a shame we didn’t get to see even a single moment of the couple being in love. It makes it hard to really root for Garcia when all we see of Paula throughout much of the game is her running around in lingerie and dying over and over again. Even Johnson, his trusty gun is just present when he leaps into hell, with absolutely no introduction. It honestly feels like an opening chapter was just removed entirely that would have contained all this stuff. This is even more apparent when after this whole segment, the real game begins in Act II, effectively making Act I a whole ten minutes long.
As Garcia continues to brave the depths of Hell, given a tour by Johnson who points out everything to Garcia as if he is shocked Hotspur isn’t aware of these things already, several of the game’s mechanics are played out via a few tutorial scenarios. The main gimmick is darkness as it can often fill a room or as a portal into another area, complete with a health draining slow walking animation. Either way, you'll have to contend with collecting human hearts or shooting a mounted goat’s head that will repel the darkness back. Darkness is also used to make certain elements vulnerable, such as red spheres that are tethered to doors or part of certain enemy types. Enemies can also be consumed in darkness and require a light shot from Johnson to disperse the darkness and make them vulnerable.
The variety of foes is pretty small with only a few general types as the game progresses on. Eventually, instead of introducing new types, the game simply places multiple of the more interesting foes together, attempting to artificially create a difficulty spike when in actuality, it causes the AI to be largely dumb, especially the spin-dash foes that upon colliding with something, will reveal their red sphere. Even the towering monsters that have the same sphere can be instantly killed when triggering darkness or even just a medium volley of bullets from the Dentist gun will do the trick. One foe in particular can have their sphere revealed with a simple light shot and you can repeat this same series of animations over and over again making them a breeze to deal with.
Enemies can be dispatched with your standard ammo or by stunning them with your light shot. As you continue to defeat bosses, you’ll gain new weapons like the Teether, which is an SMG, to the Monocussioner which acts as your shotgun. These can then be further upgraded as you continue to destroy the numerous bosses you’ll encounter as the story goes on. While upgrades to a weapon are fine, these upgrades fundamentally change the guns and in the case of the Monocussioner, it changes it from a shotgun to an almost grenade launcher. While the launcher aspect comes into play later, I wish it was simply a different gun as the Monocussioner was a great shotgun on its own and was actually fun to use. Once it converted into its advanced form, I barely used it.
While you do have a melee attack with Johnson placed upon a stick, in an almost torch-like form, it really only acts as a crowd control sort of attack to give you some breathing room. Crawling enemies can be smashed by stomping your feet and jumping on them, so you can often take out the legs of your foes to cripple them, deal with other threats, then finish off those on the ground thus conserving ammo. While there are exploding barrels to use to clear out bigger hordes, the zoomed-in camera can make it incredibly frustrating to have any awareness of what is around you and what can be useful. In fact, a late-game battle has you needing to lob a particular ammo type through a hole, but the view you have is so close-up that you can barely make out the trajectory, making the whole ordeal frustrating to no end.
This zoomed-in camera really affects combat and exploring across all fronts. While shooting feels fine-enough, across the few weapons you’ll unlock. You’ll use red gems to upgrade your guns, so things like reload speed or damage will increase as time goes on. While you'll find those red gems in dead ends and whatnot, you'll also be able to exchange the plentiful white gems to a talkative shopkeeper you'll find early on in the game. Still, even with those enhancements and upgrades I rarely found the shooting to feel that satisfying. It's serviceable sure, but rarely feels good. This is another of those things where a proper remaster could have improved things with a POV slider to just give us more screen real estate to actually see all the creatures you are fighting, especially during boss encounters or areas where enemies are constantly firing off projectiles while you trying to aim at the threats around you, only to get knocked down and have the same thing happen again.
While Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami both were absent from the director’s chair, the game still certainly maintains Suda 51’s wild personality with a slew of mini-games and varied gameplay moments. Sadly, not a single one pans out. From Pachinko to bowling, these segments rarely stick around to even become interesting at all and simply feel out of place, especially given Garcia’s desire to save his beloved. There is a series of side-scrolling segments that are likely the worst part of this game, with only the “big boner” segment coming close to being as bad. It’s a shame since while they all feel like something akin to what we have seen in other Suda 51 games, especially the No More Heroes series, they lack anything that makes them even remotely good.
Shadows of the Damned was a fairly mediocre release back in 2011 and a proper remaster or even a remake to change a few design choices that were forced upon the creators, could have really made this something special or at least improved elements of the game that needed it. Instead, this “Hella Remastered” release is nothing more than an up-res’d port with a few costumes and a newgame+ mode. The Adaptive Triggers and Gyro Aiming on the PS5/Switch might be able to entice some players to jump in, as well as the cheaper buy-in price of $24.99, but this is still nothing more than a straight port of a 13-year-old game that wasn’t that great to begin with.
Developer - Grasshopper Manufacture.
Publisher - Grasshopper Manufacture. Released - October 28th, 2024. Available On - PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (M) - Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.