Shadows of the Damned

I walked out of the bright sunlight into tigertiger, the bar/club/restaurant in London, and followed directions past a red rope bearing the sign “Private – By Invitation Only”. Climbing the stairs the light dimmed further and I was greeted by a shadowy figure at the top, his face lit only by the flickering candles atop his desk.

“Xbox or Playstation?”

“Umm, ‘scuse me?” my, usually excellent, grip upon the spoken word momentarily eluding me.

“Which do you have, Xbox or Playstation?”

“Well, er both, but I spend most time on the Xbox”

“Okay, this will be yours for the afternoon then.” With that he lead me over to ‘my’ booth. “Have fun and give me a shout if you need anything, there are beers on the bar!”

And there I was, with a dedicated machine at my disposal and Shadows of the Damned loaded up and ready to play. And beer!

Of course with this being hot to market I’m not going to give anything away here, no ‘Thpoilers’ from me! But let me give you my impressions of a game which, per genre, isn’t really my cup of tea.

Firstly, I played Shadows for five hours straight. That gives some indication that the game itself isn’t poop! The underlying Unreal engine is well known and trusted for good reason, it delivers solid environments. Once the ‘tutorial’ scenes are out of the way and you start down the path to… erm the place you’re heading (phew almost slipped there) the controls map well and there’s an intuitive feel to doing what needs to be done.

It’s pretty safe to say that this isn’t a title for the faint hearted. I’m no shrinking violet but I’m also not a horror genre fan and there is a lot of blood, slashing and entrails in Shadows which is fine because that’s the kind of game it is. As I mentioned above, this isn’t my genre of choice but here’s what I found as I played through the first three chapters: I actually started not to notice too much. Red just became the dominant colour of the screen palate and the rest was background.

There is more to the game than just the redness, the shooting and the squishy bits though. Our hero Garcia Hotspur’s girlfriend is rather pleasant to behold — well most of the time but sometimes… ick! You’ll find out. There’s also a decent amount of tongue-in-cheek humour in there too, Johnson (American’s will get that reference more than us Brits) is Garcia’s floating ex-demon skull side-kick and is always ready with a snappy one-liner as well as being able to turn into various weapons, a torch, a motorbike and being our in-game teacher as new elements crop up. But how about checkpoint markers which are one-eyed demons which poop out a glowing marker, or a demonic horse which farts out darkness? Yep that’s all in there too.

So I was in the candle and flat-screen TV lit upstairs of tigertiger for five+ hours playing a game which, by genre definition, isn’t my thing. Why? The answer is probably related somewhat to the pedigree behind this venture. Produced by Suda51 – Grasshopper Studio’s Goichi Suda – working with Shinji Mikami who created Resident Evil and Vanquish, Shadows was always going to have a certain ‘look’, but there’s also an element of “oh go on, just a little bit more then” which is where five hours ends up going.

So my un-spoilery summary is this: Shadows of the Damned is about a demon hunter whose girlfriend is taken by a Demon lord as payback for having killed his demons. Our hero then goes after her and faces ever-increasing hoards of night-crawlers, bone-crunchers and other monsters and nastiness in the process, solving some puzzle elements and drinking a lot — and I mean a lot — of alcohol on the way!

Suda51 has described Shadows as “punk-rock horror from Hell. And also a road trip movie” and I suppose that’s pretty fair. I’d play Shadows through to conclusion I think, especially as there is a cool change of mode which I can’t say anything about part way through the game. It’s not my cup of tea but I know there are folk out there who will love this.