This game is dumb as hell, immature, and kinda badly balanced. There's plenty to read about how the development of this game was a miserable fight between creative leads and the publishers and how the game came out super compromised. You know what, though? I still like it. I had a fun time and laughed at the shitty jokes. The Travis Strikes Again stage based on this game really opened my heart to the finished product, since it seems like Suda still feels some affection towards it despite the troubles. This is Xbox 360 junk food gaming and I love it for that.

most of the reviewers simply don't know how to have fun and that's okay.
shadows of the damned is a pretty fun game that doesn't take itself serious, nor it should. the main couple is hot, there's demons and of course there's that 2010s ps3 game aesthetic coupled with akira yamaoka on the soundtrack which speaks to me and of which i'm a big fan.
true, the controls felt really clunky at times and some levels were frustrating ngl but all in all it really was a fun and nobrainer experience and not all games need to have A Deep Story, sometimes you just want to play something for the lols and this game is pretty much it!!

At best (and not knowing what happened behind their development) it's a RE4 wannabe with funny horny jokes that can be fun playing it once, at worst it's a very linear and unoriginal shooter that feels disjointed and lackluster, movement and weapon use are clunky, the X360 has some rendenring issues at times, battles can be either tedious or way too easy, on the good side it has some good music tracks via SH's main composer and character design is cool to look at (made by Hayashida Q, author of Dorohedoro).
I don't know who I would recommend this tho, if you found it for free or someone gave it to you, you can try it out of curiousity, if not, don't go out of your way to play it as feels like a waste of time overall.

pretty solid action-adventure game considering it's troublesome development cycle, the combat is really fun, great weapons that feel good to shoot, responsive controls too. the upgrade system works really well and there is an substantial variety of enemies present in the whole campaign.

this also goes to the game's levels too especially during Act 4, I know these segments are not the best part of the game but I thought they were pretty enjoyable at least when the 2D segments are concerned.

the presentation is also good, the visuals aged well and I enjoyed the character design and soundtrack, sound design is also top-notch.

the story is fine, I really enjoyed Garcia and Johnson's banters, some jokes aged badly while others were genuinely funny, the storybooks that you can find throughout the game are hilarious.

overall an solid time, you can definitely tell that this game was widely affected by executive meddling and it's previous vision was way more interesting that what we got but I still think this is worth playing, it's consistently fun to play and this is what matters in the end at least for me. I am glad that this game will be no longer stuck on the PS3 and X360 consoles with the Remaster coming in the near future, until then if you don't own either of these consoles playing on an emulator works flawlessly.

E aqui vamos para o primeiro do ano e PENSE EM 10 REAIS BEM GASTOS!!! Shadows of the Damned é fantástico, e é provavelmente um dos grandes jogos da minha vida mesmo não sendo exatamente uma obra brilhante. A jogabilidade não é nada demais (inlusive a câmera atrapalha de vez em quando), os inimigos não são tão variados assim, e as piadas são bestas e erotismo é gratuito, mas PRA MIM funcionaram bem demais!

O level design é meio bizarro, eu juro que tive mais trabalho com o primeiro boss do que com todos os outros, mas ainda assim achei tudo desafiador o suficiente (joguei no Legion Hunter, e como sou um atirador vesgo, o jogo de 7 horas rendeu DIAS). Ainda sobre level design, eu tenho pra mim que alguns pedaços desse jogo foram planejados para serem um pouco maiores, mas que tiveram que cortar por qualquer motivo que seja. Ainda assim, é tudo bem legal.

O desespero na voz do Garcia toda vez que a Paula está se fodendo dá uma pena danada, mas obviamente não tanto quanto da própria Paula. Provavelmente passaria por uma belíssima história de amor se o sexploitation da Paula não fosse tao exagerado. Por outro lado, é justamente no exagero que esse jogo brilha pra mim, por que é tudo muito bizarro, muito intenso e quase nada é levado a sério. Dito isso, o jogo é 200% Macho com notas de brucutu dos anos 80. Realmente não é pra todo mundo.

O Johnson vira armas bem legais e o fato de a gente ter upgrades automáticos depois de derrotar os bosses dá uma sobrevida ao gameplay, pois fica cada vez melhor variar as armas e fica mais difícil de enjoar do jogo.

Os níveis em sidescrolling shooter foram uma surpresa divertida pra um jogador idoso (de 32 anos) como eu.

Ah, claro, a música do Akira Yamaoka deixa tudo muito melhor (apesar de eu ter percebido ela só em algumas cenas específicas).

Jogão.

HALLOMAD 2.0 GAME #6

A good but not great shooter that you can definitely tell had a fucked up development. Carried by the fantastic banter between Garcia and Johnson alongside excellent aesthethic design (and music from Silent Hill legend Akira Yamaoka). Do think the game could be a bit shorter because almost every level feels way too long with some even having odd transitions to sections that feel like they didnt need to exist. Act 4 in particular (the longest act by far) has way too many gimmicks that just feel like annoying padding. Despite that all I'd still recommend Shadows Of The Damned for anyone looking for a good time this spooky season.

7.5/10

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The bottom line is that this game is incredibly annoying.
The audio design is composed of the sound of crying (then laughing) babies, stock zombie roars, and out-of-place swearing repeated ad nauseum.

The hurdles you encounter are not challenges more than they are inconveniences, the mini-games control poorly and any uniqueness in their design is quickly overshadowed by their repetition and length. The bosses are not difficult, just well-conceptualized puppets with a glowing weak spot you have to hit too many times before they make a dick joke and go into their next phase and you shoot more.
Mini-bosses are worse, often the design is not intuitive enough to tell what you're supposed to do, and when you finally do figure it out the loop goes on far too long to the point where you question whether or not you ARE doing the right thing.
I spent 8 minutes on a fight with a generic big zombie, I went through 68 bullets shooting it with lightshot then blasting it in the back while it was stunned. It took my entire full stock of shotgun ammo to kill it, plus some from my handgun. It did not move for the entire fight save for the stun animation. I did not move either. We were locked for 8 minutes in a still, silent dance to the death.
It was not fun.
The final boss (I have since been informed that this is NOT the final boss, but the pre-final boss) took me an hour, you have to unload clips into him so he'll split into three pieces and spin around you too fast to aim, but not at a consistent speed, so you can't try and match his pace. The laser pointer reticle cannot find his hit boxes. When you do hit the shots, it's only a few before he re-forms and you have to keep shooting til he splits and spins again. I ended up quitting because I'd run out of alcohol (in-game, the healing item, I mean, I'd drunk approximately 50 bottles of various effects in this encounter), and if it had taken me an hour to get through just 2/3 of the fight (judging by the spinning pieces remaining) I didn't have it in me to do that again. My spirit had been broken. I was drinking tea this entire time in an attempt to stay calm and collected and patient. My tea had gone cold. I googled a video of the ending cutscene and went to sleep. Tomorrow I will play Dragon Quest XI and have a much, much better time. It will be therapeutic. I will forget Shadows of the Damned overnight.

The dialogue is irritating and provides no bond between the characters. We know Garcia loves his girlfriend because he is a man and she is a woman and they are both hot and the game talks about sex a lot. He also likes her caprese salad, as we learn in a throwaway line that ends in a half-assed oral joke.
Johnson is not a character, he is a dick joke. The only tension between characters is either a given sexual baseline spawned from a middle school boy's imagination, or else a threat of masculinity between two Big Beefy Boys who want to Have Sex with Women, but are being Cockblocked by the Devil (this is the name of my new indie band, debuting this April at the bar's open mic night).

The two variations of cutscene are "men make references to the fact that they have penises, then get angry," or "woman is tortured and assaulted for shock value." Poignant music is played over a scene of the latter, while a demon repeats the words "fuck youuuu" more times than I would be comfortable writing in an entire script of any length, let alone one scene of this length. Two jokes of masculinity watch this event, one shooting guns solemnly while the other stands with his dick in his hand. This is not a joke, Johnson is a phallis. He is in Garcia's hand constantly. This is the smartest subliminal messaging the game is capable of, and it's just a play on the phrase "just standing around with your dick in your hand."

There are QTEs that just happen, without you realizing what's happening until it's too late. There are crying babies, frequently. They do not stop crying, or laughing, sometimes for the duration of a miniboss fight. As I've established, that time frame is unbearable. Johnson just says things, so does Garcia. These things do not matter. There is no story in this game. All you need to know is that sex exists, in the real world, and EA loves it. That's the plot of Shadows of the Damned.

This game has boobs in it.