It’s been a good few years since I played Shadows of the Damned and when I played it I knew nothing about it. One of my mates recommended it to me but told me that I should really play it without looking up anything about it, so I did. What followed was a ridiculous, silly, violent and fantastic adventure.
The game came from a collaboration between Suda51, the mind behind Lollipop Chainsaw and No More Heroes, and Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame. It’s also worth noting as well that the soundtrack for the game was done by Akira Yamaoka, the composer for the Silent Hill series. As such, the gameplay is very similar to that of Resident Evil 4, but the rest of the game ramps up the crazy a bit.
The premise is that you are playing as Garcia Hotspur, a professional demon hunter, who finds himself face to face with Fleming the Lord of Demons. Fleming then abducts your girlfriend, Paula, and invites Garcia to come down to the underworld and get her back. Not that Garcia is alone in this endeavour. The demon hunter has a demon sidekick, a floating flaming skull known as Johnson who was kicked out of the underworld.
Johnson is the key to all your attacks throughout the game; while in default mode he is a torch that you carry around and can use to attack demons at close range. Beyond this, Johnson can turn into a gun (three guns in fact) over the course of the game. At the start, however, we only get two; a trusty handgun and a shotgun. Obviously bullets are in short supply in the underworld, so that’s not what your guns fire. No, the handgun fires demon bones, meaning the obvious name is The Boner. Later in the game, you will obtain an assault rifle that fires teeth known as The Dentist and the shotgun is loaded with skulls called The Monocussioner. Johnson is also your guide to the underworld, telling you facts about the world and how demons live. Handy, right?
The game is brilliant fun and while at first the humour seems to be quite crude and adolescent, it does quickly become quite enjoyable just for its ridiculousness. For example, the healing items are alcohol; sake at the lowest tier and absinthe at the highest tier. I mean, if booze damages your body
in the real world, it’ll repair it in the underworld right?
The game is described as a psychological horror game, though it’s also an action game to a large degree. It does do its best to unnerve the player throughout the game, through very unusual backstories to the bosses and the odd trap among other methods. The bosses throughout the game are quite interesting; they are all humans who died in a way that earned either Fleming’s respect, or his pity. So he had them made V.I.Ps of the underworld, and after defeating the boss, you will get a storybook telling you the scenario that earned them that status. While it may not be the smartest game around, it certainly makes an attempt and every so often nails it.
During the game you meet a vendor, who can only be described as a redneck demon drug addict. The drugs in question are White Gems, and he agrees to trade you items such as ammo and drinks in exchange for the Gems. Beyond the White Gems, there are two other types, Red Gems and Blue Gems. 
Red Gems are known as Performance Enhancers (seeing a trend here?) and can be purchased or found hidden throughout the levels. They allow you to level up a wide range of things like Garcia’s health, the ammo count or damage of any of your guns and other things. Blue Gems are only found after boss fights, and unlock a new gun transformation for Johnson. All three guns can also be upgraded multiple times; The Boner becomes The Hotboner while The Monocussioner becomes the Skullcussioner and so on.
I’ve been trying not to ruin or spoil the game as much as I can, because part of the fun is finding the stuff out for yourself, so I’m not going to say anything else. The game is great fun and works very well on a technical level. It came out four years ago now, so if you should happen to see a copy going cheap, I wholeheartedly recommend picking it up and having a good time!
Have you played this game? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
