Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

Suda51, creator of Killer7 and No More Heroes. Shinji Mikami, the man behind Resident Evil and GodHand. Akira Yamaoka, the voice in the darkness of Silent Hill. These three big shots team up to create Shadows of the Damned, a wacky and dark 3rd-Person Shooter and one hell of a ride.

You play as Demon Hunter Garcia Hotspur, a man who just wants to live with his girlfriend, Paula, and perhaps kill a few demons here and there. His house is immediately invaded by zombie-like demons after Paula hung herself. After fending off the demons, Paula is taken to Hell by Flemming, the Lord of Demons. Garcia follows them to Hell all for the sake of rescuing his Paula. Accompanying him is a ex-demon named Johnson, who has the appearance of a floating, flaming skull. Johnson is Garcia's guide through the Underworld and a friendly voice, he gets a lot of hilarious lines and it's always a treat to hear what he says next. There isn't much more than that, other than the fact that Paula is killed repeatedly in front of Garcia throughout his 'Road Movie' to torture him.

The rest of the game's scenes are jokes and other humorous things, this humor makes up for the lack of a detailed back story and compelling story somewhat though.

Shadows of the Damned plays almost exactly like Resident Evil 4. You run from point A to point B killing whatever demons get in your way. There isn't much in the way of puzzles or variety though. Johnson is your weapon, he can change into three different guns and can be used as a torch that Garcia can attack with. You can also shoot a lightshot, which stuns enemies, allowing them to be instantly killed, and solves the only puzzles in the game, the Darkness puzzles.

These Darkness puzzles are numerous but are all solved in the same way, run forward until you see a goat head and shoot it with a lightshot while the Darkness eats away your health. They can get really tense, however, when the demons swarm you in the Darkness. The reason for that is because the demons are invincible when covered in Darkness, something that the lightshot fixes, and when in thick Darkness, they can't be killed.

You get white gems from killing enemies which is used as currency to buy alcohol, which heals you, ammo and red gems, which are used to upgrade your guns, health, torch and lightshot. You can also find red gems in most stages and are the only hidden collectibles in the game. You will fight a boss every so often which will reward you with a blue gem upon their defeat. These blue gems change your weapons and make them more powerful.

The main downside about the game is lack of replay value, with only the other difficulties and red gems to keep you coming back. It's also a short and linear trip, though it is an amazingly fun ride.

Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack is amazing as usual. It builds up the hellish atmosphere. The sound design on the whole is great, the voice work is humorous and entertaining on top of being well done. It's great on the ears but doesn't top other works by Akira, such as Silent Hill 2.

Hell is interesting to look at. Shadows version of Hell is not as out there messed up like Dante's Inferno, instead it paints Hell as a rough town where the Damned live. It has a cool art style and the game itself oozes style. The character models and details look great though textures can take sometime to load in. There is also some serious load times between each chapter.

This dream team has brought us a great game, it may not live up to the standards of their previous works but it deserves some appreciation. The Underworld lies just beyond the sound barrier, though since you're on the internet, you already knew that, didn't you?

Story: 8.0/10
Gameplay: 9.0/10
Audio: 9.0/10
Presentation: 9.0/10