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.

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.

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

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.

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.