Games industry legends, Goichi “Suda 51” Suda and Shinji Mikami have teamed up again to codirect Shadows of the Damned, a survival horror game with a twisted sense of humour.  The result is a truly bizarre action game featuring the terrific shooting mechanics from recent Resident Evil games and as many dick jokes as Duke Nukem Forever. At times it is a joy to play, but the latter parts of the game fall flat as the game occasionally resorts to tired mechanics and the sense of humour becomes a little too predictable.

As is typical with Suda 51′s work, Shadows has a premise that can only be described as a little bit mental. You play Garcia Hotspur, a demon hunter who returns home from “work” to find his girlfriend about to be taken to Hell by the Demon Lord, Fleming. This towering evil figure declares that he will repeatedly kill Paula and bring her back to life, over and over again for eternity. Garcia follows Fleming into hell in a quest to rescue his lady. Of course, when in Hell it helps to have an ex-resident for a friend who can guide you around. Garcia’s best pal is a disembodied flaming skull, named Johnson, which is also dick joke no. 1 checked off the list. Johnson offers advice as well as being able to transform into the new weapons which you unlock regularly throughout the game.

The core of the gameplay is an over-the-shoulder shooting perspective which will feel instantly familiar to anyone who has played Resident Evil 4 or 5. Enemies range from basic slow demons, not unlike Resi’s shuffling zombies, to massive multi-stage bosses which are some of the best designed battles in any game of this type. What separates this shooter gameplay from the Resi series, is an intriguing “darkness” mechanic. At its most basic level this is similar to the gunplay in Remedy’s Alan Wake, requiring you to use a “light shot” to remove darkness from an enemy before you can destroy it with your regular bullets. However, the darkness affects more than just combat.

Whole areas of the levels can become shrouded in the dark and staying in it for too long will begin to drain Garcia’s health. However, certain puzzles can only be solved when in the dark. Doors covered in “demon pubes” can only be opened by shooting a nearby Dark Core, which is only visible when standing in darkness. Certain enemies can only be killed in darkness as well, particularly during boss fights which regularly require you to risk injury by attacking from dark areas for prolonged periods. This mechanic elevates what would have been an unremarkable horror shooter to new heights by adding a tactical and puzzling element which is seldom seen in the genre. The game is very linear, with the only exploration designed around finding a key before backtracking to unlock a door, but the combat mechanics are good enough that you will be having plenty of fun fighting demons along the way.

However, while these aspects of the gameplay are immensely enjoyable, Shadows suffers from a few problems which prevent the game from matching the quality of Suda 51′s previous work on Killer 7 and No More Heroes. The key issue is the checkpointing system, which is as poor as the one which famously ruined many a co-op game in the original Gears of War. If Garcia dies it almost always results in you needing to re-watch an unskippable cut-scene. If the checkpoint is just before an upgrade shop you will also need to re-purchase any items which you bought after the checkpoint, before you can make another attempt at the gameplay section where you died. On harder difficulties this can come close to ruining the entire experience.

The game also introduces some levels in the later stages which take place in completely different genres. The side-scrolling shooter levels work well and break up the pace of the game nicely. However, there is also a lengthy turret level which forces you to fight waves of enemies for far too long. It gets boring quickly and spoils the momentum that the game had built up to that point. The humour also begins to fall short later in the game. As much as I love Suda 51′s previous titles, this one relies far too heavily on crude dick jokes. Most of the weapon names are based around variations of the word “boner,” there is a character named “One-Eyed William,” your weapons are accused of not having enough “penetration.” I could go on for pages and pages listing these jokes. To begin with it’s hilarious, but after a while you being to expect the jokes and often predict the punchline before the characters say it themselves. It suggests that Suda just ran out of funny things to say later in the game.

Despite its problems, Shadows of the Damned still provides a fun diversion for anyone who is tired of playing cookie-cutter shooters and action games. The core shooting mechanics are tremendous and the boss battles are amongst the best which you could ever to hope to play. However, there are some frustrations which could have been avoided with more attention to detail in the game design and some more inventive humour.

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