If you are looking for some action during the holiday season, then why not make it demon-hunting fun? It’s hunting a guy down in a big red suit. Except his suit is made of many eyes, he has terrible intentions and has kidnapped your girlfriend. That feels like the holiday spirit!
As Digitalchumps writers are catching up with our reviews that might have, maybe should have been done before Halloween, we have finally made it to Grasshopper Manufacture Inc’s Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. It’s a remastered version of a 2011 game with the same title, featuring a hellbent anti-hero protagonist and an obvious demon antagonist. It is certainly a nice trip through hell after 13 years away from it.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is an interesting game that reminds me of how far the industry has come with third-person action titles. Back in the day, this game was naughty, but it was nice in how it worked. Naughty in the way that it was skating the line of being rated A for Adults Only (yep, that’s a thing), but also nice because it featured an easy-to-pick-up story, a fun set of main characters, and a good reason to take down demons repeatedly while traveling through hell. Is it perfect? Nah.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is a game that shows off how the industry was learning what should go into a third-person shooter and how much content should be delivered. It was 2011, what do you expect? While it was certainly shaky in some areas, even those that still exist within this remastered version, it did bring a fun story, great acting, and a hefty amount of creativity.
So, check your skull friend, lock and load, and remember to stay in the light as we traverse the hellscape that is this review.
Story leads us down a hell hole
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered has you play the demon-hunting tattooed and bike-riding Garcia Hotspur. He has hunted down demons and sent them back to hell with violent authority, and such deeds have caught the attention of Fleming, the lord of the Underworld. To stop Garcia from meddling, Fleming decided to capture Garcia’s girlfriend Paula and hold her as ransom in hell in an attempt to get Garcia to lay down his guns. Of course, in true heroic horror style, Garcia has no intention of doing that, but he has an intention to follow Fleming down to hell and rescue Paula before it’s too late. And he does just that.
This is like an 80s action flick with the personality of the 90s. It’s 80s because it’s simple in its story and purpose. You must accept that Garcia has done some terrible things to demons and has caused a stir in the underworld. You don’t have to see it; you just need some exposition to explain the discontent between him and Fleming, and that is enough. No joke, that’s how 80s movies worked. You would identify a hero and give him a sprinkle of context, then jump right into action. If you need an example, enjoy the fine action flick Commando. Arnie has a daughter, she gets kidnapped by some terrorist, and he has to lock and load his way through people to get her back. You get no huge backstory, just some pictures and assumptions that this guy is a badass ex-military man. That’s enough.
The game is also 90s because the 90s movie scene honestly didn’t care about violence, lewd jokes, and how far both were taken. If you need examples, feel free to watch From Dusk Till Dawn. It’s action and grossness all rolled up into a two-hour experience. And nothing is grosser in that film than Tarantino’s character’s fascination with young girls. It’s even creepier today. But that was the 90s!
Both film concept decades combined helped create what would be this game. You just need a reason to see all the violence, and the story provides it and then doesn’t hold back on its visual promises.
Now, while that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, the one thing that sells this game harder than anything else is the acting. Steve Blum’s delivery as Garcia is amazing and intense. He sounds like a rough and tough demon hunter and carries that throughout the game. It’s always nice to have a strong lead and Blum does more for Garcia than what 2011 gamers probably appreciated.
Working opposite him is Greg Ellis as Johnson, the chatty Cathy skull that helps him through the underworld. Ellis brings a good dose of comedy that helps tame the intensity of demons constantly trying to kill Garcia in the underworld. At the very least, Ellis’ Johnson helps to bring down Blum’s Garcia which can be too intense and over the top at times.
Combined, they deliver good comedy, sell the drama, and make the story much better than maybe it deserves. The supporting cast helps as well with Julianne Buescher as the damsel in distress, Paula, and Paul Mercier as the merciless Fleming.
Going back to the narrative, the story isn’t anything special, as it does work around its creative limitations, but the acting helps sell it. It feels like the actors did a great job of bringing their characters to life, which brought the world to life, and brought the story’s impact and entertainment definitely up a notch.
Ghoulishly Good Gameplay
While the gameplay of Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered isn’t perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, it does its job of making the moments in the story intense. The game is driven by a third-person vantage point, which allows Garcia to see the world around him quite well. This works great when dozens of demons are running at you from different directions. It was the right genre to set this game in and it allows for the world around Garcia to be seen much better, which helps sell the story.
The issue I have with the third-person vantage point in Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is how difficult it is to aim. While there is a wonderful tracer sight going from gun to target, there is still something a bit loosie-goosy about aiming with it. More times than not, I was just slightly off from my target with aiming simply because the line of sight was just a wee bit off from what my brain expected. The game gives you a crazy amount of ammo, so this isn’t a big deal, but the comfort level of aim/shoot was never settled during the review experience. This is my biggest issue with the game, as I felt like I never quite visually grasped how to aim perfectly without wasting a fair number of bullets to get there. Again, the angle was just off a little during the action. This was my biggest issue with the game but one that didn’t hold back the fun.
Beyond that road bump, the game was a treat to play. The game featured a typical blueprint for third-person shooters, where Garcia would traverse the underworld, have certain actions he had to accomplish to survive areas, and just pick stuff up as he went to strengthen his chances of survival. The lead gameplay element here is shooting and destroying demons and bosses. All of which are not too bad to navigate when you’re playing at normal or easy levels. They have easy solutions to figure out and require just a good aim and the right amount of jumping out of the way to get by. For example, the first boss you encounter in the game has a giant blood bubble on his back. If you shoot him with Johnson’s fire bullets, it gets him to temporarily turn around to expose that bubble. The rest is just wash and repeat, which I’m grateful for because it doesn’t hinder the story progression or the feeling that you’re accomplishing something in the gameplay.
This type of gameplay is also what you would expect from a third-person shooter, as they are typically quick and dirty, yet easy, and Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered does not disappoint in its delivery of that gameplay. Again, the only shaky part of the game, at least for me, is aiming. It’s not perfect which means you will struggle at times putting bad guys and bosses away. The positive of shaky aim is that the intensity level of the moment will be heightened in the process. Who knew that so-so controls could be a good thing? Not me.
The other piece of this game’s gameplay puzzle is, well, puzzles. The game features a lot of obstacles that require you to find material, perform certain actions, and/or run around in a limited amount of time to discover an exit. Some of these puzzles come in odd forms. It’s the underworld, so that isn’t shocking. For example, early in the game, you learn that goat heads hanging on walls and structures provide light in dark areas. This light wards off complete darkness and demons, the former of which can tear Garcia’s skin right off. You must use Johnson’s fire shot to light up these goats, which helps keep Garcia alive, as well as expose demons to something they do not like. This goat is scattered throughout Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered and comes into play with puzzles and progression.
There are also creepy baby-crying gatekeepers in this game that have to be fed fruit, brains, or eyeballs to get through. The game tasks you in these puzzling moments with finding the necessary material to feed the gates. That material could be hidden in buildings or behind other gates that Garcia has to figure out how to get through. These types of puzzles help to expand the gameplay to more than just point-and-shoot, which helps drive the gameplay to be a bit bigger than what you would expect. They certainly don’t hurt the action of the game, rather they compliment it. Anytime you can play an action game with quick puzzles that make sense and only help the world-building experience, then you’re probably playing a good game.
Other areas of gameplay interest is the backend simplicity that comes with Garcia and his ability to get through demons and puzzles comes in the form of collecting material that eventually helps you upgrade. The upgrades start with gems that you must collect. As you start in the game, Garcia learns different types of gems can be used for different types of material. White gems are coins that can be used to purchase health drinks and whatnot. Red gems help to upgrade certain attributes of Garcia, such as health or gunpower but are harder to find (and that makes sense because you shouldn’t upgrade him too fast and too powerful). Blue gems upgrade Johnson and make his usefulness a bit bigger than just a chatty skull with good comedy. While the backend of the game is subtle and doesn’t outshine the action, it does enough to add more to the experience. It certainly gives you a dose of motivation to keep getting stronger and to keep exploring and playing Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered.
With all the above combined, you get a straightforward and fast-paced action experience that offers up puzzles and decent upgrades. The other big driving gameplay element of Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is the creativity that was put into the game’s world and personality. The gameplay feels like you’re in hell and everything that is within hell feels like it belongs there. There is so much that makes you visually uncomfortable that you can’t help to feel what Garcia is feeling when he is figuring out the disgustingness and moral decay that comes with such a place. The amount of creativity that went into this was one element of the gameplay I didn’t fully appreciate in 2011, as the creativity was thick with how the underworld acted and what it threw at you. There is so much gross personality that comes with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered’s series of levels and the bad guys that live in them. It’s a fun game that delivers what it promises.
Remastered
While you’re not going to get anything overly remastered in this release, you will get a definitive upgrade over the 2011 version. Capcom has unfairly set the bar with how much time and money it throws into remastering its classics, even sometimes changing the style of gameplay, but Grasshopper Manufacture Inc doesn’t go that deep with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. It does improve the textures, the world that Garcia must travel through, and improves the creepiness of the bad guys through and through.
Visually, the game is so much better than its 2011 counterpart, which isn’t too difficult considering that generation’s hardware limitations. You will see improvements from the moment you load the game, which is super-fast in comparison to its original counterpart, and you will leave the game feeling like it was at least last-generation visuals. That’s not a knock, especially considering what this game looked like originally. It’s just not as remastered as what you would expect a remastered game to be these days. Again, Capcom has unfairly raised the bar in that area.
At the end of the day, it’s still very much a remastered version of the game. It delivers what it promises and only hiccups with some objects that look like they belong in the PlayStation 2 era (love those God Hand pick-ups along the adventure). It feels good on the PlayStation 5, plays well, and it’s a fun adventure that is legitimately improved.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered from developer and publisher Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. isn’t a remastered game that people might have been asking for, but it might be now after what it brings to the third-person shooter table. Ultimately, it’s a stupid fun action game driven by gore, a well-acted story, and a thick amount of creativity that looks better and acts better than it did back in 2011.
