The torch causes a problem of its own however. You have three core weapons in the game, each representing a colour which is either red, green, or blue. The problem with this is that the currently selected weapon causes Johnson to change to that colour, in turn causing the torch’s reflection to be red, green or blue. At first when I started playing I thought the game didn’t look too bad, just overly red, until I later found out it was the torch causing this horrendous colour distortion on everything around Garcia, including himself. This means that most of what you see in front of you while playing, has a nauseating colour of your choice, none of which appear very natural, or does the game any favours.
Shadows of the Damned won’t win any awards for graphics, but it isn’t really terrible either. That being said I cannot understand the logic of causing the coloured reflection to appear everywhere, instead of just having a normal yellowish torch in hand. After all, the weapon menu shows you which weapon you have, and even if it didn’t there are only three so it’s not like you need a constant reminder. Frame rates were consistent throughout, and I never had any lagging or stuttering issues, but there was a drop in V-sync here and there.
Regardless, the banter between Garcia and Johnson is where the real comedy is found. In this regard it reminds me of the Playstation2 game that nobody played, Primal, where the human, Jen was accompanied by a gargoyle called Scree, and hilarity ensued much like it does here. Unlike Primal, the secondary character in this game is more a narrator, and remains unplayable, simply offering hints or tips here and there.
At the core, Shadows of the Damned uses a darkness system to instil fear and panic in the player. It’s not darkness in the usual sense where you can’t see anything and need to take out your flashlight to see what the hell’s going on. Instead it’s a mostly blue and rather well lit timer by which you lose health if you stay in it too long. In most sections of darkness it’s a simple case of finding a Goat’s head and hitting it with your Lightshot weapon modifier, to chase the darkness away. It might not be exactly original, but it works very well for the most part, and there are various combinations of different tricks required to complete a level. Not once throughout the game did I feel like they employed the same tactic one too many times, and the game world consists of such variety of locations that you never feel like you’ve turned the same corner twice.
Some darkness scenes can’t be lit up at all, or require some mechanical intervention on your part to make it go away. The darkness is about the only part of the game that ties in with the “thriller” tagline, as it pushes you to perform faster and not think things through properly, making mistakes in the process. The game is never scary by any means, and doesn’t use the monster-in-the-closet tactic like most. It’s a shooter with scary looking, fast moving monsters, set in a questionable underworld.
Throughout your adventure in Fleming’s playground, you pick up red gems which allow you to upgrade your weapons and character. The currency of choice is white gems, which are used to purchase ammo and health packs from vending machines, but you can also buy a variety of stuff, including red gems from Christopher, the demonic mobile vendor with the hill-billy accent. After every big battle you also pick up blue gems which will allow you to upgrade Johnson. These don’t really give you any choice in the matter, and you simply get your weapons upgraded to bigger, better, more powerful ones in a preset order. The weapon’s names also become more lewd and more ridiculous as you go along.
Boss battles are varied in form and setting, but generally require the same tactic of hitting the red sections on their bodies to disable them in a step by step fashion. Normally these go hand in hand with switching between Dark and Light, to accomplish different things or exploit different weaknesses.
I don’t want to give the details away, but the three weapons are pretty much a pistol, machine gun, and grenade launcher. I would advise choosing a favourite right at the beginning and only upgrading that one throughout, as you can’t actually get enough gems to upgrade each and every weapon to full capacity. Well I guess you could, if you were one of those freakshow gamers who leave no brick unturned, but most normal people would be better off choosing one and sticking to it.
Speaking of normal people, if you are one of those console gamers who believes in keeping your PC around for FPS and other shooter games, because you just can’t accept the gamepad as a viable alternative over a mouse, then this game is not for you. For that matter, if you are a regular console gamer, but don’t consider yourself to be moderately decent at shooter games, give this one a skip. The aiming system is slow and extremely unforgiving, requiring pinpoint accuracy. This becomes a considerable problem when everything else on the screen is moving quickly…and never stops doing so. I played it on Easy (go ahead, judge me) and found it almost unreasonable at times, and I can imagine a more casual gamer being so frustrated they won’t even finish the first couple of chapters before putting it down.
A great many people have complained that the game is too short. Personally I get bored with ridiculously long games quite easily, and I found Garcia’s adventure to be very well paced, with each of the five acts split into four to five chapters which are well spaced and offer a good variety gameplay types. There are these 2D sidescroller sections that break the flow of the main theme quite nicely, and fill up whole chapters by themselves, and then there are certain comedy set pieces in the game itself which are not just hilarious in their own right, but offer a great distraction from the main plot’s gameplay. It felt like seven hours to me, but according to Raptr I spent nine hours with the game.
It’s difficult to say anything about the main story and the events that occur, without giving away all the really good moments, or spoiling the comedy of it all. All over the game world, generally before boss fights you find these story books. Except for the irritation of having to press A after each and every page, the narration and commentary by Garcia & Johnson make these story books some of the funniest moments in the game. Garcia’s horrible Spanish accent in itself, while struggling with difficult English words is hilarious, but Johnson’s camp attitude takes the cake. Considering that the subject matter of these story books are truly horrible, and quite disturbing at times, it makes for a truly bizarre experience.
It turns out the soundtrack wasn’t just radio static after all. It’s difficult to put my finger on it, but I really enjoyed the musical accompaniment, it just set all of the scenes so well, without ever being monotonous. There’s a great variety of tunes to be heard, from the heavy grunge variety to cathedral opera, and even a little bit of drum and bass from what I recall. Sound effects were nothing out of the ordinary, but the voice acting was pretty good considering it’s meant to be purposely cheesy. I loved the aboriginal musical sounds the Sushi Lamps make, when they escort you through the darkness.
If there’s one thing I need to complain about, it’s the lack of sensuality in the game. Now I don’t want to sound like a perv here [Ed: You managed to fail on that mark.], but playing a game that’s already rated at 18+, Paula hardly instilled the desire in me to really want to chase after her for the entire nine hours of the adventure. Considering the game is filled to the brim with sexual innuendo, they really could have made an effort to make the thing a whole lot more sexy. God of War 3, was hardly what I would call adult-themed, and it managed to offer more than Shadows of the Damned did. Sure there is a scene which is brothel/strip-club like in nature, and there are even boobs for a fleeting moment in the same section, but I just feel that after everything else the theme of the game alludes to, it’s somewhat lacking in this regard. It’s about time games catch up with the likes of Spartacus and Game of Thrones, offering a truly adult experience, as seen on TV.
At the end of the day, I expected very little from Shadows of the Damned, probably because I had no hype machine to raise my expectation beyond ridiculous proportions. I was however very pleasantly surprised by what I found here, and it has been the most entertaining title from a presentation and pure smile-on-my-face perspective, that I have played all year. Sure it has a few bugs, it’s not the prettiest by far, and the gameplay won’t have me coming back for more, but one blurb on the back of the box ended up ringing very true…
“One Hell of a Trip”
Score: 7.5 out of 10 prawns
Details:
Distributor: EA
Publisher: EA
Producers: Goichi Suda (Executive director), Shinji Mikami (Creative producer)
Soundtrack: Akira Yamaoka
RRP: R499
Rating: 18+