Shadows of the Damned on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 was a game wrought with troubled development due to excessive EA executive meddling. This was supposed to be a Kafka-esque survival horror game set in a demon village with a protagonist using only a torch as Goichi Suda and Shinji Mikami envisioned. It was going to be experimental and unlike anything gamers had ever seen.
Unfortunately, their vision was compromised and Suda has been conflicted over the final product ever since. Despite Shadows of the Damned becoming something else entirely, it still found an audience that connected with the colorful cast of characters and off-color humor. Suda has since reconciled with Shadows of the Damned and even honored it in Travis Strikes Again, where players go through the game in reverse and hinted it would return one day.
As awesome as Shadows of the Damned is, there was room for improvement. It was always a diamond in the rough and now that it’s getting remastered, it can finally be the best it can be. What kind of features can fans hope to see? Is there new content for veterans? Find out in our Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered review!
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Grasshopper Manufacture, NetEase Entertainment Interactive, Electronic Arts
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360 (as Shadows of the Damned), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 3 ( as Shadows of the Damned), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: October 31, 2024
Price: $24.99
This is a story about Paula, a woman with a checkered that comes back to haunt her. Her boyfriend, demon hunter Garcia Hotspur, gets roped into her baggage when a demon lord named Flemming shows up and abducts Paula. Garcia and his shape-shifting weapon Johnson will have to road trip their way through Hell, battling Flemming’s minions and chugging a ton of booze along the way.
Shadows of the Damned has a simple story that is elevated by its characters and surreal imagery. The lore surrounding Hell is interesting and suggests it’s like any other place but has to abide by bizarre rules. Flemming is a dictator, but he’s also a guy who felt betrayed by Paula. At the end of the day, Paula screwed over both Garcia and Flemming and they end up fighting over her for nothing.
There are some questions Shadows of the Damned keeps vague. Flemming constantly resurrects Paula, only to have her brutally killed. How he does this isn’t explained, but he is a magical all-powerful demon so it does not matter. As you make your way through the demon villages and dungeons, you can see countless Paula corpses along the way, and it’s fun guessing how they were executed.
The story is mostly an excuse to put Garcia and Johnson in different situations to foster creative gameplay. At its core, Shadows of the Damned is a very typical third-person shooter that takes some pages from Resident Evil 4‘s playbook. Unlike Leon, Garcia can strafe. Being able to move and shoot has advantages, but the gameplay is still weighty and Garcia can easily be overwhelmed. No matter how powerful you feel, expect to be pushed against a wall by a wave of ravenous demons.
What makes Shadows of the Damned different from Resident Evil 4 is its light and darkness mechanics. Demons can be engulfed in darkness which makes them immune to all attacks. Like a drunken Mexican Alan Wake, Garcia uses light to burn away the darkness and expose their vulnerabilities.
Using light against dark pops up against bosses, pushing Garcia toward using candles to generate a field of light. Other times a wall of darkness will encroach and players will have to improvise as doom pushes forward. Players can always rely on Garcia’s light shot, but its cool-down is long enough to feel the pressure of missing, leading to an early grave.
Other than bukake-ing gross incandescence all over demons with his Johnson, Garcia’s arsenal expands the deeper he goes into dark territory. By the end of the game, he will have three main weapons which can all be upgraded with alternate modes. The Boner is Garcia’s basic sidearm which gains a secondary shot where our hero fires an explosive hot wad.
The Monocussioner is a shotgun that fires skulls and when upgraded, it becomes the Skullfest 9000 and can charge shots to launch four skulls at once. The Teether is a machine gun-like weapon that fires teeth (the kids love this one). When the Teether gets upgraded, it becomes the Dentist, the most powerful gun that has homing teeth capabilities and utterly melts demons to a brown stain.
Shadows of the Damned‘s most infamous weapon is the Big Boner. It’s a sidearm so unbearably massive that it’s restricted to specific levels where Garcia can’t move. This glorifed stage gimmick is functionally a rife and can headshot scrubs from a mile away. Sadly it’s still restricted to certain levels and Johnson can’t transform into it at will.
Gameplay-wise, Shadows of the Damned is a very linear and straightforward action adventure. Garcia can upgrade Johnson with gems whenever he meets Christopher, the bizarre half-man, half-demon Southern boy voiced by Cam Clarke. He functions like the merchant from Resident Evil 4… overall the entirety of Shadows of the Damned is like Goichi Suda and Shinji Mikami commenting on Resident Evil 4‘s success.
Shadows of the Damned is stuffed with moments that feel like it’s a satire. It never takes itself seriously and has lots of amusing horror movie references and meta fourth-wall-breaking gags. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to homaging the Evil Dead films and a threatening character who is built up but is never fought as a joke. One boss established to be extremely dangerous is fought as a 2D cut-out in an absurd scrolling shoot-em-up level.
Shadows of the Damned is still a fun romp dense with stimulating set-pieces and gimmicks. The battles are rowdy shootouts with aggressive naked monsters and dodge-rolling into them and smacking them around with Johnson is as tense as ever. Garcia’s controls are fluid and have exaggerated animations that reinforce the silliness inherent in the premise.
As a remaster, Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered takes care of a few crucial features that fans have been demanding for years. New game plus has been added which is a godsend because it was impossible to fully upgrade everything in Garcia’s kit. Even if you got every red gem possible and farmed as white gems, players were still limited by the white gem count maxing out at 999.
There aren’t enough opportunities to grind and the game shunts the player forward past certain thresholds, making backtracking impossible. With new game plus, there is no need to farm white gems to buy red gems. It is so freeing to play Shadows of the Damned without stressing over the grind and to replay the story with everything carrying over.
Other neat features are the bonus costumes. Some are development gags or references to other Grasshopper games, like the Eight Heart costume or the outfit that references Garcia’s original design when the game was meant to be a psychological horror game. Sadly, there is no cut content restored or additional scenarios. No chapter select or extra modes and there is still only one ending.
One of the better features added that isn’t brought up much is the gyro-aiming. The core mechanics and playability for aiming were typical of the seventh-gen console third-person shooters. With the dual sense’s gyro-aim, Garcia’s controls gave me flashbacks to Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. He is more accurate and players are given more control over his shots.
The technical aspects of Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered are kept very basic. The graphics are mostly the same. It was already a very stylish and good-looking seventh-gen game with a very lurid and intense color pallet and detailed character models. The lighting does appear to be improved and has softer edges to make shadows appear softer. Some rough textures are still rough, but load times have been significantly reduced.
The framerate is surprisingly unstable which is disappointing, but way better than anything we had when Shadows of the Damned was on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The drops happen usually in sequences when Garcia runs through darkness zones. It is still very playable and feels very smooth. Playing the PlayStation 4 version on a PlayStation 5 the frame rate locks to 60.
The graphics hold up because of the awesome art design and Q Hayashida’s flawless character designs. Flemming’s triple-decker skull is iconic and Garcia’s purple jacket remains the coolest jacket ever worn by anyone. Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is such an unapologetic and boisterous game full of hilarious pee-pee jokes and stylish visuals. It’s no wonder why it has been a cult classic for as long as it has.
Akira Yamaoka’s music is on point yet again in Shadows of the Damned. The soundtrack he crafted sounds like a more chaotic and unhinged version of his music for Silent Hill 3. He brings back a lot of familiar samples and adds a mariachi twist with some Mexican folk leitmotifs. During the calm moments, he channels Angelo Badalamenti’s slow-rolling jazziness.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered could have done more, but it is still amazing that it happened at all. Unlike Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, which came back worse off than its original version, Shadows of the Damned isn’t missing anything and is almost half the price.
A game like Shadows of the Damned probably could never be made today, let alone published by EA of all people. Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is a rare kind of game that only comes around as a remaster and rarely as a new release. If you’re a fan of The Evil Within or Resident Evil 4 but always felt like they needed more crass and vulgar humor, then you’re going to have a lot of fun.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a copy purchased by Niche Gamer. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Shadows of the Damned is now available for PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
