Review: Shadows of the Damned

Shadows of the Damned is a third-person, over the shoulder shooter for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture.

Hope you like ugly yellow European architecture covered in gratuitous  shadows, because you will be seeing that a lot.

The girlfriend of demon hunter Garcia Hotspur, Paula, has been kidnapped by the king of the underworld, Fleming. Armed with his talking, transforming gun Johnson, Garcia descends into the underworld to rescue Paula.

Garcia travels through five sections of the underworld, which are four to six levels long fighting zombies until you reach the end of the level. The zombies do not have any attack besides walking up to you and hitting you, so it is all about shooting them before they cover the distance between you and them. Killing the zombies with a headshot is the fastest way, but they can also be slowed down by shooting off their legs, or you can shoot them in the torso.

Garcia also fights bosses, who can only be killed by repeatedly shooting their weakpoints, some part of their body that is bright red.

Garcia’s main weapon, Johnson, starts off as a pistol, but can turn into a machine gun and a shotgun-esque gun after getting blue upgrade gems from defeated bosses. The weapons can be upgraded further with red gems, which increase strength, ammo capacity, and reload speed. Those gems are hidden in the levels, or bought from a demon with white gems that are dropped by zombies.

All three weapons have advantages and drawbacks, but, outside of bosses, I did not see any reason to use anything besides the pistol, especially after I upgraded its strength, since it was accurate and had good range.

One recurring obstacle that Garcia has to deal with is Darkness. Some areas are covered in Darkness, which makes enemies invincible and drains Garcia’s health. To get rid of the Darkness, Garcia has to shoot a special goat-headed lantern found in the area with his light shot. Most of the puzzles in the game deal with trying to find the lamp, which is hidden or blocked by some obstacle.

Garcia aiming at one of the goat lamps on the other side of the Darkness.

I never found any of the puzzles to be that difficult. The goat head lamps were always easy to find, as were any hidden switches. That is good though, because they would have gotten in the way of the fighting, which was where the fun was.

The only other obstacles are locked doors that you have to find the keys for, and you usually find the keys along the way.

The most common enemies are normal zombies, followed by zombies with helmets that Garcia cannot headshot, crawling zombies that block lanterns, and zombies with long blades on their hands. While this may seem like a lot, the crawling zombies are the only ones that act differently. The rest are all slow and easy to kill. There are a few recurring minibosses near the end, but those have tiny weakpoints that are a pain to kill. I would have rather mowed down tons of zombies that had different ways to fight than monsters I have to dodge until they are exposed.

There is no story besides Garcia and Johnson trying to rescue Paula. The game does not even give a reason why Fleming did not just kill Garcia in his apartment. Garcia is a Latin stereotype that is trying too hard to sound badass, and Johnson is a nebbish English stereotype. Most of their dialogue is obvious dick jokes a fifteen year old could have come up with. The ending was really unsatisfying too.

The game is just so uninspired. The gameplay has nothing unique about it, all the characters are two-dimensional at best, the story is non-existent, and the level and enemy designs are forgettable. The only time I was excited was fighting some of the bosses and when there were several enemies, but I did not care about where I was going or Garcia and his problems.

The levels are terribly linear and largely look the same. Even though the game hides those red gems needed to upgrade your weapons (though most of them are easy to find) the game discourages exploration by destroying paths you cross and not allowing you to replay old levels.

Near the end the game turns into a side-scrolling shooter for a couple of levels. I think Grasshopper did this because they had used up what little ideas that could ring from this game already.

I will not say that I did not have some fun, because over the shoulder third person shooter gameplay is usually fun, but the rest of the game is so phoned in. If Grasshopper did anything interesting with the characters, story, enemies, levels, or the humor, this game would worth your time. Instead it is just a bare bones shooter, utterly indistinguishable from other shooters, except for its terrible jokes.