Shadows of the Damned - Review
I've been playing this litle gem over the last couple of days and, after having amassed a decent 7-8 hour play time already, I've almost reached the climax (pun intended).
You play as a demon hunter named Garcia Hotspur (Shock! Horror! You're not Dante!!) and he's pretty bad-ass. He's 100% human, has a mean scar on his face and has tallied so many demon kills that he's also managed to get the attention of Flemming who is the self proclaimed king of demons.
Flemming's states that he's a little pissed off with Garcia destroying so many of his demon invaders and so, takes something from Garcia in the shape of his girlfriend Paula. All Garcia has to do in order to get her back is announce that he was beaten by a demon superior to him and Flemming will release Paula.
Garcia, in short, tell Flemming to go fuck himself and then is forced to follow both Flemming and Paula in to the underworld to free the love of his life.
That's that... I'm not going to ruin the story but, it all kicks off from there!
It plays a lot like Resident Evil 4/5. The camera is over the shoulder and the controls are easy to learn. That said, the aim system isn't as polished as RE but, the learning curve is pretty shallow and within an hour, you're taking heads off from a 1000 paces!
I like this game. I was interested in it the moment it showed up on my radar which was a little over a month ago but, the developers had been pretty tight lipped about it as a whole and so, I wasn't able to actually find much more than I did on it.
As a result, it's flying pretty low and I'm sure a lot of people probably won't pick it up because of this. However, this is a good thing for us gamers and most retailers will soon drop their prices and you'll be able to pick it up for cheap :D To give just one example of how unknown this game is, when purchasing it, I asked:
I'd like to trade these in for Shadows of the Damned and Fear 3 please.
The manager's (yes, the MANAGER) responded:
Fear 3 we have but, are you sure about this other game? I only know of Fear 3 being released today.
The problem with a lot of games recently (as I've seen) is that they built up far too much with media hype. Good examples are L.A Noire and Duke Nukem Forever as both of these got so much media attention, to play them was a slight downer.
L.A Noire was great for the first few cases. It was like Phoenix Wright meets GTA but, around 5 or so cases in you began to notice a pattern and everything began to feel very samey.
This is one of the reasons I think Phoenix Wright worked. You see, phoenix Wright was samey BUT, you only had 4 or 5 cases and often you'd run into some serious walls where you just go "WHAT THE FUCK?" and it was the complexity that made it so great. L.A Noire on the other hand, had about a thousand small cases that had no complexity and allowed you to just stumble through them.
Duke Nukem Forever, well, just read reviews!
However, cutting back to my point, Shadows of the Damned has no real hype to live up to other than the names behind it. Those how don't know who Suda 51 or Shinki Mikami will be even more in the dark as to how good this game can possibly be and so, will be pleasantly surprised when they're walking through hell getting their arses kicked!
That said, this game isn't for everyone. It's incredibly childish and one of the enemies says nothing more than "FUUUUUUCKKK YOOOOOOOOUUUUU!" about a million times to which another character later mentions "There were more F-Bombs there than World War 2!" (or something to that effect). Garcia likes a good innuendo/sexual pun and his shape shift demon sidekick named "Johnson" is Garcia's primary weapon called "The Boner".
You feel, at the beginning, that this type of humour is as dated as Duke Nukem (see what I did there?) but, I was supprised at some of the things I was laughing at. The humour is top class and it doesn't force itself upon you like an old pervert in a bar. I unfortunately got that feeling from Wheatley in Portal 2 and unlike G.L.a.D.O.S or Cave Johnson, I just felt as though the script felt a little forced.
Instead, the humour is carried by Garcia's "Don't fuck with me" attitude and Johnson's " I don't want to be here" sarcasm. The result is incredibly childish yet, highly effective.
Shadows of the Damned is well worth the retail price and I read rumours of the game taking anywhere above 15 hours. I can tell you that unless you are a complete idiot or have never played a survival horror game in your life, you're realistically looking at around 9 to 10 hours.
The graphics are nice but, the developers have decided to concentrate more on the story. As a result, it's actually very immersive and the little back-stories you find are a welcome break as well as being equally entertaining.
The controls could have been tweaked just a little but, as it is, it's very easy to adapt to.
There are only two minor flaws from what I can see:
There is no Game+ mode (not a biggy)
The achievements/trophies don't stack (so multiple plays are required)
These are no major issues though. In fact, there are no real major issues with this game other than a tiny little bit of clipping that sometimes occurs resulting in nothing more tan an enemy landing an attack.
Talking of attacks, the combat is very fluid in this. You can move while aiming and if you are about to be attacked from the rear (where you can't see the enemy) you'll get a prompt allowing you to counter-attack :)
If you like your survival horror games (and I've looked it up, this is a survival horror) then you'll enjoy Shadows of the Damned. As a result of it being fairly unknown, you can expect it to tank in price very quickly but, don't let this put you off of it. I'm pretty sure that the reason there hasn't been much marketing for this is due to it's contents and all an advert would contain would be Garcia jumping out of a window and then riding a motorbike!
In all, out of 5 this scores a 4 for me. It's not the best game of 2011 but, it fucking good and has some fairly challenging achievements/trophies for all you scorewhores!
