Shadows of the Damned should have been one of the all-time greats of the gaming world. It featured Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil, as the producer. The story was written by Suda51, a director and writer best known at that time for crafting over the top plotlines in games such as No More Heroes and Killer7. The musical score was led by none other than the great Akira Yamaoka, the composer for several of the amazing Silent Hill soundtracks.
Despite this almost "perfect storm" of talent behind the scenes and generally favorable reviews, the original release failed to pull in much of an audience. Sales were rather anemic and, at least for most people, the game quickly faded away from memory. Despite this, Shadows of the Damned did manage to create a bit of a cult following over the years. Those that did enjoy the game and craved more always appreciated the title's crude humor, sound design, absurd plot, and presentation. It was easy for some players to overlook the game's numerous shortcomings that included boring combat encounters, an often troublesome camera, and very short play time.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered does very little to alleviate any of the original release's shortcomings. In fact, this release seems to add in some additional annoyances that I would love to see addressed in a patch. Hella Remastered offers the absolute bare minimum of modern improvements and changes for this modern-day release while doing little or nothing to fix what was broken over 13 years prior.
In Shadows of the Damned, you play as the gruff demon hunter Garcia Hotspur (voiced by Steve Blum). We meet Garcia right as his girlfriend, Paula (Julianne Buescher), is being abducted by the Lord of Demons, Fleming (Paul Mercier). To save Paula from an eternity of torment, Garcia follows Fleming into the underworld. Aided by his demonic sidekick, Johnson (voiced by Greg Ellis), Garcia battles through tons of basic enemies and a handful of more powerful boss enemies to save Paula from being killed by Fleming repeatedly.
As mentioned, Garcia is aided in his trip through the underworld by Johnson. Johnson is the Swiss Army knife of Shadows of the Damned. Typically, he's a smarmy floating skull. However, Johnson can also transform into a torch that can illuminate Garcia's surroundings or be used as a melee weapon. He can transform into a motorcycle in a pinch. Johnson is also Garcia's main weapon, and that weapon is named Boner. Boner is a revolver type of weapon that blasts enemies away with demon bone ammunition. Further into the game Boner is upgraded to Hotboner and then Big Boner. All these weapon types can have their damage, reload speed, and ammo capacity upgraded as you work your way through the game.
If it was not obvious by the weapon names, all the crude humor present in the original release remains perfectly intact for Hella Remastered. There are plenty of dick quips and jokes to go around. I personally did not mind all the dick jokes for the first hour or two, but they do get very old very quickly. Beyond that the juvenile humor, you also see plenty of both T and A thanks to at least one scantily clad boss, and an even more scantily clad (and sometimes partially nude) vision of Paula spurring Garcia on throughout most of the game's levels.
The core gameplay in Shadows of the Damned consists of a bit of very light exploration, some light puzzle solving, and a decent bit of combat. Combat feels a bit less clunky than it did in the original release, if only because gyro aiming is supported in the PlayStation 5 version that I played for review. If you are relying solely on the use of analog sticks for aiming, you may find the experience to be a bit frustrating given how frantic some of the combat encounters can be. Trying to hit specific weak points on enemies as they're running at you, especially in boss fights, is a real lesson in frustration without the aid of gyro aiming. I'm typically not a huge fan of gyro aiming controls but I almost feel like this game needs it.
Over the course of the game, there will be several instances where you will be consumed by a blue and grey "darkness" that slowly eats away at your life. The only way to halt the spread of darkness is to shoot glowing goat heads that will emit a burst of light to clear the area around you. The "puzzle" element here lies in the fact that you sometimes need to scramble around your environment to find a spot that gives you a clear line of sight on a goat head lantern to shoot it. Sometimes you also willingly need to step into the darkness in order to see buttons that you have to shoot in order to clear obstacles that prevent you from progressing or reaching safety. Several enemies are also often bathed in a shield of this darkness, which needs to be blasted away with a literal shot of light from Boner before you can proceed with killing them with regular rounds.
These moments where you scramble around in the darkness to reach safety or find a goat head are made frustrating by the troublesome camera, Garcia's rather clunky movement, and environmental clipping. All too often I found myself getting annoyed at getting caught or hung up on the edges of objects when trying to sprint through areas as my health ticked away. The camera also caused several periods of annoyance when it prevented me from seeing enemies around a corner or clipped into environmental objects as I tried to line up shots.
If those weren't bad enough, several areas of the games options and overall presentation just felt terrible. Those playing on consoles can expect just a single page of the most basic of options. There are no toggles for framerate modes. You won't find any options to disable things like the extremely heavy vignetting around the edges either. If you're looking for literally any accessibility options you best look elsewhere because there are none to be found here outside of captions. Even some simple options like being able to just hold a button down to complete the button mashing quick time events would have been welcome here.
A lack of graphical options may not be so bad if the game didn't suffer from several issues. The framerate targets 60 fps but will often dip very hard (seemingly straight to 30 fps) at various times. I noticed that most of the framerate issues occurred when in those pockets of darkness. Given how the darkness mechanic is so prevalent throughout the game, you will see the framerate drop hard and fast many times while playing. Everything feels very sluggish when the framerate drops occur, including camera movement to the point that when the game jumps back up to 60 fps the camera movement will often look like it's snapping a bit in the direction that you're holding the stick.
Even outside of the darkness, I saw multiple areas where I could replicate the framerate drops. I included a very short video below that illustrates both the framerate issues and a look at how the camera speeds up, or snaps, in the direction it's turning. This was all recorded on a PlayStation 5. This is one of the top issues I would like to see addressed in a patch. So far, my review copy has received no update over the past two weeks I have had access to the game.
Note the most obviously noticeable changes in camera movement speeds at the 0:19-0:21 mark and 0:50 mark
I already mentioned the extremely excessive vignetting that cannot be disabled. Vignetting is that dark shadowy-like border you sometimes see around the edges of a game. In Shadows of the Damned, it is cranked up higher than I think I have ever seen in any other game I have ever played. The game is already quite dark, be it intentionally or due to poor contrast balancing in this remaster, but it's made about a hundred times worse thanks to the vignette. The only way I found to not be completely turned off by the completely pitch-black shadows and oppressive vignette was to crank the in-game gamma up higher than I ever normally would.
The "remastered" part of Hella Remastered is extremely anemic. The addition of gyro aiming is certainly nice. There are also four new costumes for Garcia. Some textures have been given a resolution bump but there are still plenty of low-resolution textures to be found. The game seems to target a 4K output resolution and targets a framerate of 60, though it fails to maintain that. There is also quite a bit of very near object and detail pop-in, which is wild to see given how small and linear most of these levels are. The lack of options, including accessibility options, is also completely inexcusable.
Looking at the building right in front of Garcia: See how more detail is added on the windows, window frames, and window sills as I take small steps forward
This remaster also does not allow you to change the difficulty for a New Game+ playthrough. You will be stuck with the same difficulty in New Game+ that you had in New Game. Furthermore, those hunting for Trophies or Achievements will have to play through the game multiple times because playing on the harder difficulties does not unlock the Trophies/Achievements for beating the game on the lower difficulty options.
There is certainly some fun to be found in the seven or so hours it will take you to complete your first playthrough of Shadows of the Damned, but the negatives vastly outweigh any of the positives. The one big thing working in Hella Remastered's favor is the $24.99 launch price. At that price, it's basically a no-brainer purchase for fans that enjoyed the original. However, those who never played the original Shadows of the Damned should wait and see if the game receives any patches or updates. As it stands, I simply cannot recommend this game to anybody outside of those most diehard of fans.
Score
Additional Information
- Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered
- Developed by: Grasshopper Manufacture
- Published by: Grasshopper Manufacture and NetEase Games
- Price: Starting at $24.99 (USD)
- Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5 (Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC)
- Release Date: October 31, 2024
- ESRB: Rated M for Mature 17+ (Blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, sexual themes, strong language)
- This game was provided to Total Gaming Network for review purposes.
