Imagine this. What if Goichi “Suda51” Suda and Shinji Mikami collaborated again after Killer 7? That was one hell of a shooter, very unconventional. Weird.
And so they did with Shadows Of The Damned. The original 2011 release was published by EA, which was odd even at that time as the company was scaling back on publishing games from external studios. And the reception for the game was so-so. A Suda51 trip will always be, well, a trip, but Shadows Of The Damned just didn’t quite have the cult following compared to his other works like No More Heroes or Lolipop Chainsaw.
So it’s nice to see Shadows Of The Damned has escaped purgatory for being a 7th-gen console game with Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered, releasing this Halloween on all current consoles and PC.
Enough time has past to re-examine Shadows of the Damned. Why didn’t enough people give a damn about this game back then?
As someone who didn’t play this game way back then and is now experiencing it for the first time (but also a fan of Resident Evil 4), I can firmly say that this is a solid, though not quite remarkable, horror shooter.
But with the game being mostly unchanged from the original release, this is now a time capsule. And for that reason alone, I enjoyed it more than I think most players experience when this was new.
Presentation
For a remaster, of course you’d expect some graphical improvements. And Hella Remastered did make some, but the differences are really minute.
The original game running on Unreal Engine 3 had this specific style of lighting. In the intro sequence of the original game, protagonist Garcia Hotspur was so well lit that his skin is effectively glowing, highlighting his tattoo-laden shirtless body. The remaster has muted this, so lighting appears more natural with today’s games, but it also makes the game all the more darker. The remaster lacks that bloom.
And when he does don his purple jacket on, the insignia at the back now sparkles a bit, though mostly it comes off as crushed pixels than what was supposed to be a crusted metal ornament design.
The game does run silky smooth with no noticeable framerate drops. On PS5, it’s all smooth 60 FPS as far as my eyes tell me.
The textures have been touched up a bit, as the game can run up to 4K on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. But texts on posters still look rasterised. Don’t expect new textures either; the City Of The Damned looks mostly the same, just a tad nicer.
Similarly, there has been no change to the voice acting; it’s still the same talented people that gave their all back in 2011. The music by Akira Yamaoka is still intact, which gives Shadows Of The Damned a good mix of dreadful horror ambience, hopeful yet sombre string arrangements, and good old rock and roll. The sound effects are what you’d expect. It’s nice to see, or in this case hear, that good art can stand the test of time with little need for adjustments.
The animation work has definitely aged, but it has its charms. The way Garcia reloads each gun, the way he hustles when he sprints, the way he artificially speeds up like a cartoon character when he opens a large door, and the grotesque movements of the demons can look odd, but it’s probably even harder to intentionally make them look that way today. Some of it still took my breath away. It’s rare to see a character model swallowing another character model, but they made it work.
The more you look and listen to Shadows Of The Damned, the more you will be reminded that it is the product of its time. It feels like a PS3 game. And it also feels like a PS3 game that still feels like a PS2 game as well. More on that later.
Many other video game remasters go above and beyond when it comes to brushing up the presentation, though Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remaster is not that. It’s doing the bare minimum. It’s an enhanced port rather than a remaster, some may say disparagingly. But hey, at least Grasshopper didn’t mess this up.
Gameplay
In Shadows Of The Damned, you play as Garcia Hotspur. (Hella Remastered now introduces him as Garcia “G” Hotspur, would’ve been funny if it said “Garcia Fucking Hotspur” though.) He’s a demon hunter who drops into hell to give chase to a demon who stole her dear Paula. Together with the wisecracker of a floating skull named Johnson, the two venture into the City Of The Damned to save Paula and kill more demons along the way.
Shadows Of The Damned sure has the DNA of a Mikami action game in that the way you control the character can feel unorthodox. The first thing I thought when moving Garcia around was, “Wait, this game has tank controls?”. It does not.
But this third-person camera always hovers behind Garcia’s shoulders, so if you move the right analogue stick around, you rotate him around as well. And the rotation is slow, enough that you have a button press for a quick 180-degree turn.
This game has a bit of that Resident Evil 4 (the original 2004 game, not the 2023 remake) feel, down to the way you aim your gun.
On that note, you don’t get an aiming reticule plastered on the centre of the screen. Instead, you move the laser sight around to aim, and by default it is oh-so-sensitive, probably by design, so that you are forced to take time to aim for precision shots or waste ammo by just pulling the trigger as fast as you can.
Shadows Of The Damned can be claustrophobic, as you essentially move across tight, linear corridors with the occasional branching path where you have no idea which path is progression where you can’t turn back. So combat can get really tense from not having enough room to manoeuvre and the deliberately clunky shooting. The game regularly spices up the encounters you face with gimmicks, so the basic combat loop does feel fun throughout the runtime.
Speaking of the gimmicks, the most important one is the use of light and dark. When Garcia enters darkness, he will slowly take damage and die. So you either have to get out of dodge and find a light source or light up a light source. And this is well used during combat and puzzles, as well as combat sequences with puzzles. It’s rather straightforward; a few tutorials and you’ll instantly get the gist of it. But the way it twists the rules is creative and will leave you surprised.
Along the way, you’ll be collecting currency used to buy health consumables (various types of alcohol), with rare currency used to upgrade weapons. There are also weapons upgrades that unlock naturally as you progress through the game. Garcia’s arsenal isn’t that much (a pistol, a shotgun, an SMG plus simple melee attacks), but they will increase in function and power throughout the game.
The core gameplay is good, but is it good in 2024? That depends. It’s fun if you want a throwback to simpler times, but don’t expect to unearth groundbreaking gameplay that didn’t get its due back then.
Content
Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered has most, if not all, of the content from the original.
So we have to talk about how the game is written.
Sure, the game has a horror theme, but it is pulpy and campy, and I mean this endearingly. It’s so earnest in trying to be cool and edgy. Why do you have to shoot light shots on wall-mounted goat heads to bring light to darkness? Shut up. The Rule Of Cool is on. Just roll with it. Next question.
Is Shadows Of The Damned scary? Thankfully not. As a certified coward who couldn’t stand jumpscares and doesn’t enjoy horror media, I loved playing this game. It’s definitely spooky, and the amount of gore and grotesqueness on display (plenty of appendages and graphic destruction of the human body) does make it feel slightly unsettling, but it has so much dark humour.
One of the early bosses you encounter is a giant homunculus with big cleavers on each arm and growls menacingly, but every time he moves, the sound of a harmonica plays. Imagine having to face Resident Evil 2’s Mr. X stalking around tight corridors, but every time he moves, you can hear the theme of Thomas The Tank Engine playing. I was terrified and laughing at the same time throughout that encounter. This is a goofy-ass horror game. Endearingly.
That’s all fine, but I hope you like innuendos. This game is not afraid to be a little sexy, and it can be crass with all the apparent dick jokes. I mean, your main revolver weapon is called the Boner. Sure, you can pass it off as a double entendre (Johnson is made of bones, and the Boner uses bones as ammo). And then the description of the upgraded version of the Boner, Hot Boner, comes in to make sure you know what it’s packing. It’s packing heat.
Hey, don’t blame me for also making innuendos. Don’t hate the player; hate the game if you cringed.
There’s plenty of phallic allusions throughout the game. You’re even walking with one. Johnson gets limped and stiff in his torch form at times.
There will be some folks who won’t like the whole damsel in distress situation and the way some of its female characters are portrayed, but this remaster is just presenting the original game as it was, content wise. In the review kit I received, there is an acknowledgement that some of the elements of the story “may now be considered somewhat inappropriate.” Though I wish it was mentioned somewhere in the game itself just to directly let players know the folks responsible for releasing this remaster are aware that this was a product of its time.
There is new content made for Hella Remastered, but it is very minimal. You get four new costumes for Garcia to unlock, one of which requires beating the game first. And there’s New Game+, so you can do another run and hopefully get all the upgrades, since the rare currency for upgrades can easily be missed.
Fans of the original shouldn’t expect Hella Remastered to bring anything major to the table. It’s more or less the same game. But this one you can play on modern platforms.
Personal Enjoyment
As mentioned previously, I don’t play horror games as much, or am a fan of horror in general. I also don’t consider myself a big Suda51 either—I don’t really play his games outside of Let It Die. And that’s precisely why I wanted to do this review. If someone who was not a big fan of Suda51 decided to give Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remaster a go, would they enjoy it?
For me, I did. Sure, it didn’t wow me with creative gameplay (the gimmicks and puzzles are fine) or ensnare me with its fast yet fiddly-by-design combat (it’s as fun as the old Resident Evil 4, which I did finish and love). I don’t think the story aged well today. Though the innuendos and silliness it exudes from time to time to contrast with the macabre, sombre tone of the world definitely put a smile on my face.
There is a beauty to Shadows Of The Damned’s design. It can feel like a 6th-gen era game at times, and even with the remastering, it still passes off looking like a 7th-gen era game. But to experience the good old days of gaming is a nice break. Especially if you’ve been playing the latest major releases too much like I have. Sometimes it’s nice to look back on what we have forgone. Like how small games used to be—the install size of this on PS5 barely reaches 5GB, even smaller than new indie games with simpler graphics styles today. And how there’s no busywork content to pad out the game time. No crafting system. The joys of simpler gameplay systems compared to the behemoths AAA games today are.
I also come to appreciate the little changes to game design the industry has adapted today. No missable content, clear indications of what’s an optional path and what’s the critical path. These little things bug me when playing Shadows Of The Damned, and I’m glad modern games are more conscious of how gamers feel anxious about potentially missing content.
And some of you may groan about the smattering of yellow paint to help players find their way around in modern games, which is an argument worth having, but seeing yellow glows on openable doors and gates in this game meant this trick has been used longer than we realised.
Also, I appreciate good wordplays. Even if it’s all corny innuendos. The fact they committed to the bit with the constant stream of phallic humour is something a fellow wordsmith would respect.
I don’t think Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered reaches the highs of other games I’ve played this year (2024 is a hella good year for game releases). Still, I walked away with it feeling I had a good time within its decent runtime for a playthrough.
Verdict
The best way to enjoy Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered is from the perspective of someone who wants to revisit an old game. If you’re expecting this remaster to correct the wrongs of the original or add even more content, then you’ll be sorely disappointed.
As a remaster, it does the bare minimum of making the game run smoothly on a modern platform without changing too much of how the original game looks, sounds, and feels.
As a game, Shadows Of The Damned definitely deserved a cult following. It’s eccentric blend of horror, rock and roll, and crass silliness isn’t for everyone, but this is the sort of art that must continue to flourish. There’s a bleak future where video games are just mass produced products, focused tested to provide the optimum profit for shareholders. Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture’s punk spirit raises multiple middle fingers to that, as their games have always been weird, bucking whatever is trendy and just making whatever they wanted to make.
Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remaster probably won’t change your mind if you already have an opinion of the original game. But that it is still around today should make you ponder: wouldn’t it be nice if games with unconventional styles could still be made today and find an audience?
It’s time that we give a damn about weird games. And Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered is hella weird.
Played on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher.
Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered
It's time that we give a damn about weird games. And Shadows Of The Damned Hella Remastered is hella weird.
- Presentation 7.5
- Gameplay 8
- Content 7
- Personal Enjoyment 9