One hell of a game.
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| Meet Garcia Hotspur, this is how he says hello |
The terms ‘Supergroup’ and ‘Dream Team’ can very rarely be
applied to the game industry, but they were the only words on my mind when I
heard of the combination of forces that had been assembled at Grasshopper
Manufacture. You’ve got the unmatched creativity and wit of the enigmatic
Suda51, the arguable godfather of Survival Horror - Shinji Mikami, and Silent
Hill’s musical mastermind Akira Yamaoka; their powers combined could only lead
to one of the greatest games of our time, with unbridled innovation, stellar
gameplay, and a top-notch soundtrack to boot, surely? Well, maybe not quite.
The result of their collective talents, Shadows of the Damned, is a great game that
does a lot more right than wrong, but isn’t quite the seminal masterpiece some
of us had, perhaps a little optimistically, hoped it might be.
Of all the plaudits I could throw at Grasshopper
Manufacture—and there are many—the one thing I admire most about the company is their creativity. Games like Killer7 and No More Heroes didn’t redefine
genres but brought so many fresh ideas, off-the-wall hooks, and such an
exceptional brand of humour that they felt like whole new experiences when
compared to their rivals. Shadows of the Damned perhaps strays a little closer
to the line of familiarity, feeling more or less like most other third-person
shooters out there, but still retains enough charm, wit, and outrageous
nonsense that serve to make Grasshopper games completely unique.
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| If I was making a case for "Why this game is cool", this'd be Exhibit A |
The game opens at a pretty blistering pace and refuses to
let up till after the credits roll. The scene is quickly set, our hero Garcia
Hotspur loses his girlfriend to Fleming, the foul-mouthed, six-eyed Lord of the
Underworld, and like any good boyfriend and proud demon hunter, Garcia, along
with his buddy Johnson, must battle the hordes of Hell to save her. Thus begins
a roughly 6-8 hour journey, or 'road movie' to cite the game's grindhouse stylisation, across the realms of oblivion, shooting a whole mess
of demons, lighting up a host of goat heads, and collecting an awful lot of
strawberries. Yes, as you’ll remember from earlier on, this game is made by
Grasshopper, and despite SotD’s relative conformity when compared to their other titles, the developer’s taste for
wonderfully obscure touches has rarely been more evident.
Garcia Hotspur, more or less a Mexican Dante drenched in
tattoos, has the right to go down as one of this generation’s best new heroes.
He’s a cocky, self-assured, supernaturally talented demon killer who loves what
he does and is damn good at it. The guy could happily kill ‘hell monkeys’ 24/7,
and a few times early on in the story his unwavering confidence might surprise you. We expect these sorts of protagonists to be fearless, but Garcia takes
it to whole new levels. He’s the sort of supercool personality you can only
find in video games and 80s action flicks; the ultimate badass who sees the
ugliest, nastiest thing in the world speeding right at him, and doesn’t even
flinch. At the outset of the game, he’s a character you may struggle to relate
to, throwing out some pretty corny one-liners and cringeworthy innuendo; but as
the game goes on, and his buddy relationship with the other central character
Johnson begins to grow, you really may begin to love Garcia Hotspur. Speaking
of Johnson, the English-accented, curiously cowardly flaming skull, who also
acts as your weapons, motorbike and torch, provides plenty of the game’s
humour, and is similarly one of gaming’s standout characters of recent times.
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| Can't say I'd battle the hordes of Hell for her myself, but Garcia digs the eye thing |
As with a lot of Shadows of the Damned, in the early going
the relationship between our heroes seems a little odd, as though you’re
jumping into a TV season halfway through and catching a particularly rough
episode, but as the game progresses everything begins to feel a lot more
natural. The chemistry between the pair grows more and more over time, and the
voice work behind the duo must be commended, along with the writing on the
whole. For a game that gleefully throws so many awful d--- jokes at you, it
sure does manage to seem cleverly written at times. And for every line of corny
innuendo, there’ll be another of genuinely exquisite humour. As an example,
you’ll occasionally stumble on storybooks scattered about this hellish
oblivion, and, in a somewhat detached break from the action, you can elect to
hear Garcia and/or Johnson read the story aloud, throwing in their own
colourful commentary as they go. Normally I doubt I’d be able to muster the
patience to put down my controller and listen to a game read me a story, but
after hearing the first one, I couldn’t help but seek out and enjoy every other
book in the game. The stories themselves are amusing and again, very
well-written, but it’s the way our protagonists read and remark upon them that
really brings the humour to life. Little touches like this, along with the
countless hit-and-miss one-liners the pair trade throughout the game, lead to
an obscure but highly entertaining double act between Johnson and Garcia, and
by the end of the game they feel like much deeper, well-developed characters
than you could have imagined at the outset.
So the story, characters, and general aesthetic are solid,
but how does it play? Well, maybe this is the part where Shadows of the Damned
starts to break down. The game is much more run-and-gun third-person shooter
than anything resembling survival horror, and the actual act of shooting, while
perfectly competent, never quite feels particularly satisfying. The over-the-shoulder
perspective and controls are taken straight from the likes of Dead Space, and
the guns themselves are certainly well-designed, with a variety of increasingly
powerful weaponry unlocking as you go, granting a sense of progression to
proceedings. All the ingredients for excellent gunplay are here, but in
practice it just doesn’t quite live up to expectations. The guns lack that sort
of punch you’ll find elsewhere, the shooting itself never seems as fun as it
should be, and even the boss battles, for all their grandeur, rely on
traditional and tired mechanics that seem unbefitting of the studio’s aspirations
of innovation. It’s as though there’s some intangible piece of third-person
action, some sprinkling of magic that games like Gears of War 3 and Resident
Evil 5 have been privy to, but Shadows of the Damned missed out on.
Unfortunately, it seems like one of those games that just isn’t too great at
being a game. So much of the overall package is brilliant, from the story, to
the sound, to the writing, with all of these aspects demonstrating a fastidious
nature in the game’s development team. Plenty of Shadows is so well made, that
I can recommend it regardless, but the part where you have to sit down and play
this game, for all its variety and genuinely smart design, remains decidedly
underwhelming. It’s an unfortunate truth that simply can’t be ignored.
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| Shooting isn't great, but it sure looks pretty |
So how do goats and strawberries factor into all this? Well
the game plays with the dichotomy of light and dark in some varied, if rather
simple ways. Areas blanketed in darkness are much more dangerous, as the
enemies therein will be invincible, and Garcia will gradually lose health if he
spends too much time in the dark. As such, the only natural solution is to
light up the area by any means necessary, which usually means shooting one of
the numerous goat heads dotted about the place with a special light shot—goat
heads of course being the Underworld’s primary light source. Once an area is
illuminated, enemies can be defeated and Garcia is relatively safe. As the game
progresses, the idea evolves a little and enemies will do their best to keep
you from turning on the lights. The game never becomes especially difficult, but certainly ramps up as you approach the finish line. The use of darkness is a simple mechanic that complements the
overall experience, and the variety doesn’t stop there. Shadows of the Damned
is a very linear game, but there are a decent amount of puzzles along the way, a
few are unique and relatively complex, most are simple, and many involve locked
doors that can only be opened by force-feeding strawberries to demonic baby
faces. Just re-read those last few words before carrying on, make sure you got
it. Yes, it’s as simple as keys and locks, but with a garish Grasshopper touch
that makes one of the oldest systems in gaming just that little bit more
enjoyable. The strawberries and other items are never hard to find; this isn’t
Resident Evil, you won’t be hunting down countless keys and crests, or pixel-hunting
every area, and there’s almost no backtracking in the game to speak of. So the
puzzles aren’t exceptionally hard or tedious, but they do a decent enough job
of keeping the levels varied. On top of all that, there's even several other pretty special tricks—that I won't spoil—that Grasshopper employ to keep the experience fresh, and prevent the game slipping into the
old trap of becoming one shootout after another.
Visually, the game is a little hit, a little miss.
On the technical side of things, it runs with a solid frame rate, and there are
no glaring graphical issues to speak of. Characters and enemies are mostly very
well-designed, if not graphically spectacular, with the bosses being the real
stars of the show. And the game successfully captures and conveys its grindhouse inspirations to a standard that many other titles have failed to
reach. On the downside, aside from a few notable exceptions, most of the
environments in SotD are bland and forgettable.
Of course, it would be unrealistic to expect Hell to be full of vibrancy and colour, but perhaps more could have been done to make each
level look and feel distinctive. There are several standout areas in the game
that certainly fulfil that description, with some levels and sequences feeling
very carefully-crafted and visually exciting, but it’s a shame that the same can’t be said for the
rest. There were simply too many occasions where I found myself wandering grim, dimly-lit webs of city streets. On the
flip side, I can do nothing but hurl bundles of acclaim with both hands at Akira
Yamaoka and the rest of the sound design team. In a similar manner to Silent
Hill, the audio really drives this game, and it’s evident that a lot of
attention went into every voice recording, sound effect and musical track. Every voice actor does a wonderful job of paying tribute to the fine script, bringing the characters to life, and injecting yet more personality into the package. Musically, Yamaoka’s
soundtrack is fittingly ludicrous, but brilliant, with hardcore punk rock riffs
and melancholy guitar solos making notable appearances.
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| This guy only wants a handshake |
The team behind Shadows of the Damned did a lot of things
right. They perfectly captured the grindhouse motif; they struck a fine balance
between childish gags and savvy self-awareness; and they successfully invented
a rich world in which to tell their story, and some compelling characters that
you’ll probably remember for quite some time. They made a game with rough edges
but a good heart. A game that takes some time to settle in, but once it does,
if you can cope with its problems, it becomes almost irresistible. That you
should feel so compelled to see it through despite its issues is testament to
how enjoyable the majority of it is. It’s saddening that for all the things
they got right, there are still a few obstacles preventing SotD from being the
true classic it so clearly had the potential to be, but unless you have a powerful
aversion to cheeky innuendo, guns with names like the Skullfest 9000 and Big Boner, or the
idea of jamming a strawberry right down a demon’s throat to open a door, then you have no
reason not to give Shadows of the Damned a try.
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