To Hell and Back
Continuing with my own little study on Grasshopper titles, I would inevitably have to come across Shadows of The Damned one way or another. Check out my review on Killer is Dead for a little more insight into Grasshopper works during for what it seems to be, their darkest era. Creatively speaking, at least.
This is again, another case of the 7th gen taking reings on a production with a widly different approach as pitched by Suda51 himself originally. It was a project called Kurayami which in japanese stands for "darkness". Long story short, Kurayami was quietly canceled somewhere around 2009, before the real production of Shadows of the Damned started to pick up steam. It never came to a full-time production, nor passed the prototype phase. Only some photos covering the artwork and ideas were shared to magazine. The remainings were spread alongside other Suda's projects such as Black Knight Sword, Shadows of the Damned and Kurayami Dance which is a manga written by Suda himself.
The story is fairly simple. Our man Garcia Hotspur enter into the depths of hell to save "his" girlfriend Paula, kidnapped by the demon lord: Flemmin (had to look that up, I totally forgot his name). And...yeah that's pretty much it, it is a long journey through a hell citadel looking oddly similar to an eastern european village infrested by demons. The story doesn't take a big role, unlike in other major Grasshopper titles. Instead, what shines through is the creative map design, puzzles, atmosphere and a somewhat fun combat.
Mikami's output into this game design is palpable. If you ever played Resident Evil 4, you'll feel at home, as it is mostly the same philosophy to make the levels dynamic and not boring at the long run. First, introduce a new mechanic with a simple enough puzzle to solve. Second, make sections more difficult and challenging. The last piece is to interwine it with other previously known mechanics, and going from there add extra twists on top. While the combat isn't anything to write home about, the level design carries this games over and over again with secrets, puzzles and fun monsters to shoot at. This is Shadows of the Damned biggest strength, constantly toying with it's ideas, giving them new purposes most of the time and being able to keep it fresh for a long period of time.
On the other hand, for presentation Akira Yamoka plays the role as the main composer. Credits say "Music by" which makes me believe he was in charge of the whole soundtrack. Somber, comfortably dark and atmospheric as always. Here, this is the main menu song which I quite like honestly. Oh boy, this is presentation we're talking about in a 7th gen console game, made no less in Unreal Engine 3 were everything is shiny and wet, for some reason. Look at this shiny grass from Sonic Unleashed to see what I mean. On PS3 I encountered several technical problems, from the very expected screen tearing, incredible input lag and long loading screens to the outright weird not having collision all through a level since it didn't trigger a cutscene during one of the many instances were it automatically saved but freezed the entire game for 30 seconds or more. It was Grasshopper first time using Unreal Engine at the time, and it definitely shows.
EA's hand were lurking all the way into production with Shadows of the Damned. The scenario as Suda said in one of many interviews was written at least 4 times in total, until EA greenlight the project to go until full production. "We want guns, we want dick jokes, we want this, and that..and that". A common ground with the team given the situation they were in was found at last and the project started sailing smoothly, or at least better than meetings that as Suda described, felt like interrogations. Can you imagine that? I've covered many cases which this has hapenned in the past, EA should've known who they were dealing with in the first place. They didn't knew what they were getting into probably, I don't think they ever wanted to sabotage Suda's project on purpose. That would be a bit dumb, but it's EA we're talking about. The EA that killed Visceral Entertainment, the one that shutdown Pandemic Studios. Now that I think about it, isn't it something similar that it is hapenning right now? In a few years, only some will remember. If this review or site are still up that is.
To Hell and Back as described by The Cambridge Dictionary means: "to live through an extremely unpleasant, difficult, or painful experience". I think that title serves well for what this project development was, ultimately giving it redemption in "Travis Strikes Back". This makes me to believe Suda, after all the hell he went through with EA found a soft spot for Shadows of the Damned and rather than ignoring it as a thing of the past he embraces it as one of a life experience that hopefully will not be replicated. You can learn a thing or two from bad experiences, cases may vary a lot but this example serves as a reminder that you need to kill the past to live in peace with your future. Suda probably had this realisation, and started working on the remaster which hopefully will come out soon. He even delayed some projects to make some space, such as a flower, sun and rain remastered which has been rumoured for a long time.
Continuing with my own little study on Grasshopper titles, I would inevitably have to come across Shadows of The Damned one way or another. Check out my review on Killer is Dead for a little more insight into Grasshopper works during for what it seems to be, their darkest era. Creatively speaking, at least.
This is again, another case of the 7th gen taking reings on a production with a widly different approach as pitched by Suda51 himself originally. It was a project called Kurayami which in japanese stands for "darkness". Long story short, Kurayami was quietly canceled somewhere around 2009, before the real production of Shadows of the Damned started to pick up steam. It never came to a full-time production, nor passed the prototype phase. Only some photos covering the artwork and ideas were shared to magazine. The remainings were spread alongside other Suda's projects such as Black Knight Sword, Shadows of the Damned and Kurayami Dance which is a manga written by Suda himself.
The story is fairly simple. Our man Garcia Hotspur enter into the depths of hell to save "his" girlfriend Paula, kidnapped by the demon lord: Flemmin (had to look that up, I totally forgot his name). And...yeah that's pretty much it, it is a long journey through a hell citadel looking oddly similar to an eastern european village infrested by demons. The story doesn't take a big role, unlike in other major Grasshopper titles. Instead, what shines through is the creative map design, puzzles, atmosphere and a somewhat fun combat.
Mikami's output into this game design is palpable. If you ever played Resident Evil 4, you'll feel at home, as it is mostly the same philosophy to make the levels dynamic and not boring at the long run. First, introduce a new mechanic with a simple enough puzzle to solve. Second, make sections more difficult and challenging. The last piece is to interwine it with other previously known mechanics, and going from there add extra twists on top. While the combat isn't anything to write home about, the level design carries this games over and over again with secrets, puzzles and fun monsters to shoot at. This is Shadows of the Damned biggest strength, constantly toying with it's ideas, giving them new purposes most of the time and being able to keep it fresh for a long period of time.
On the other hand, for presentation Akira Yamoka plays the role as the main composer. Credits say "Music by" which makes me believe he was in charge of the whole soundtrack. Somber, comfortably dark and atmospheric as always. Here, this is the main menu song which I quite like honestly. Oh boy, this is presentation we're talking about in a 7th gen console game, made no less in Unreal Engine 3 were everything is shiny and wet, for some reason. Look at this shiny grass from Sonic Unleashed to see what I mean. On PS3 I encountered several technical problems, from the very expected screen tearing, incredible input lag and long loading screens to the outright weird not having collision all through a level since it didn't trigger a cutscene during one of the many instances were it automatically saved but freezed the entire game for 30 seconds or more. It was Grasshopper first time using Unreal Engine at the time, and it definitely shows.
EA's hand were lurking all the way into production with Shadows of the Damned. The scenario as Suda said in one of many interviews was written at least 4 times in total, until EA greenlight the project to go until full production. "We want guns, we want dick jokes, we want this, and that..and that". A common ground with the team given the situation they were in was found at last and the project started sailing smoothly, or at least better than meetings that as Suda described, felt like interrogations. Can you imagine that? I've covered many cases which this has hapenned in the past, EA should've known who they were dealing with in the first place. They didn't knew what they were getting into probably, I don't think they ever wanted to sabotage Suda's project on purpose. That would be a bit dumb, but it's EA we're talking about. The EA that killed Visceral Entertainment, the one that shutdown Pandemic Studios. Now that I think about it, isn't it something similar that it is hapenning right now? In a few years, only some will remember. If this review or site are still up that is.
To Hell and Back as described by The Cambridge Dictionary means: "to live through an extremely unpleasant, difficult, or painful experience". I think that title serves well for what this project development was, ultimately giving it redemption in "Travis Strikes Back". This makes me to believe Suda, after all the hell he went through with EA found a soft spot for Shadows of the Damned and rather than ignoring it as a thing of the past he embraces it as one of a life experience that hopefully will not be replicated. You can learn a thing or two from bad experiences, cases may vary a lot but this example serves as a reminder that you need to kill the past to live in peace with your future. Suda probably had this realisation, and started working on the remaster which hopefully will come out soon. He even delayed some projects to make some space, such as a flower, sun and rain remastered which has been rumoured for a long time.
Franz Fafka? Q Hayashida? Stupid Japanese, just make a worse version of RE4, will ya? pulls a fat cigar drag
Por alguna razón este juego desparecido de mi biblioteca, así que nunca pude terminarlo.
Wow EA took a humongous step down since Spore dropped
Funny, cool, and slightly incoherent like all the good Suda51 games. It’s been a long time since I played this but I do remember running from Paula genuinely creeped me out.