Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered Review

Shadows of the Damned was a game I played a few years ago and I do recall enjoying it, one thing that always haunted me regarding my original playthrough was that I had a really bad PS3 disc that prevented me from getting furthur into the later parts of the game so I ended up having to procure another copy just to beat the game since there was no digital PS3 store version. If you want any geniune downsides to physical media, it's most certainly that. This remaster has come along and while it has some weird glitches here and there, the addition of gyro aiming on PS5 as well as being a more accessible version of the game makes this remaster a no brainer when playing SotD again or for the first time.

I will mention that I suffered two weird bugs regarding the game, one wasn't game breaking and the other made me reload my last save, so the lack of a checkpoint restart option from the pause menu did annoy me this time around. Also, while the gyro aiming mostly works fine, there are moments where it starts randomly spazzing out and acts unresponsive.

Anyways on to the game itself, before and at the time of release, the game was using big industry names like Shinji Mikami, Suda 51 and Akria Yamaoka as major selling points.

The game's story and writing does have Suda 51's trademark bizarre weirdness to it and the game's story itself is basically an excuse plot like many game stories. It's "fine" and the over the top voice acting did carry me through much of the story. Fleming was a pretty dull villain since he shows up at the start and end of the game and never does much to get in Garcia and by extension the player's way. The journey of slowing making through the underworld is pretty decently executed especially with the world select screen remiscent of 2D platformers.

Akria Yamaoka's music however is pretty disappointing stuff. Early tracks aren't too bad and has his trademark ambient sounds but the game itself hardly has any background music and if there was, there wasn't anything that stood out or got me into the rhythm and stood out from the gunfire and exploding body parts. This could be said with the Silent Hill games since many tracks played during cutscenes but SotD doesn't have much memorable music. The songs with Mary Elizebeth McGlynn is fares better but there is only two the whole game, they do fit the mood when they start playing especially towards the end.

Shinji's Mikami's influence does feel the most noticeable. SotD is basically Resident Evil 4(2005). Garcia aims his gun like Leon does and the combat feels very RE4 inspired where enemies have different damage reactions depending on where you hit them. You get a run button and you can quick turn. The last one is pretty much useless.

However, SotD has some major differences. Garcia can move while shooting, has a dodge roll, there is a dedicated melee attack button, he can attack downed enemies, and can also perform a counter attack on an enemy when attacked from behind(making the aforemention quick turning useless).

Combat is also way more satisfying and stimulating than RE4 is with demons exploding when blown up with a shotgun, headshots popping out way more and limbs just bursting apart at the seem when shot at.

There also isn't moment to moment combat either, you have to find different keys to open certain doors and having to contend with a dark world that drains Garcia's health when in it with only strawberries to recharge his resistance. You need to light shot goat heads to turn off some of these.

To the game's credit when combined, there is usually something new to break up moment to moment shooting, there are parts where you need certain keys to open certain doors, go to the dark world to turn off shoot red switches, light shot certain doors, get chased and will need to contend with enemies while doing all this. There is also weak point targeting with some enemies.

The problem is that SotD at times can take this a little too far. The stuff that involves the moment to moment shooting is fun and exhilirating but the 2D shoot em up sections and that "Big Boner" section I just wished were cut out of the game entirely since they don't add much. Big Boner was a huge difficulty spike too.

Biggest issue with the game and that RE4 avoids is the healing items and upgrades. You can carry 3 types of healing items small, medium, and large but you can carry as many as you want and gems are plentiful so it's easy to stockpile thus making dying on normal difficulty something you have to try hard to do. You also get invinciblity frames while healing. You can put all your upgrade points into health making it even harder to die.

To counteract this, bosses have lots of HP and they aren't hard because they are geniunely challenging, it's because they have so much HP and take forever to die especially the final boss. It's hard for the player to die, but they will take lots of bullets before going down.

Another big problem is that the game never tells you have a shotgun and to top it all off, it isn't even hitscan like most if not all video game shotguns, this is fine when dealing with weaker enemies but when during during harder foes especially with weak points and it's the only weapon you have, it can be a massive pain to use since the projectile takes a while to land and trying to quickly hit an enemy weakspot and have the hit register feels like a game of luck due how the randomized registering hits with it is. 

It's also never told you have the grenade launcher attachment for the shotgun and you aren't forced to use until the 5th chapter, I'm willing to bet many looked up a walkthrough during that grenade launcher puzzle in Act 5-1. 

Overall, good game but there are big issues and I'm willing to forgive them since the game is a lot of fun when it comes to most of the moment to moment gameplay.