Review: Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered

I was introduced to Suda51 through Killer7, and was enamored by No More Heroes and its sequel. After that, I feel like things fell into a bit of a lull. He did a lot post-Desperate Struggle, but I mostly remember Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Killer is Dead.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy them; it’s more that I really love Killer7 and No More Heroes. Those games, I just found them to be fine. Enjoyable but not extraordinary. But that was a long time ago. My tastes have matured, I’m more open-minded, and I look at video games in a broader way, so I was looking forward to giving Shadows of the Damned another chance with the Hella Remastered version. Some people really dig it, so maybe I just wasn’t able to appreciate it properly at the time.

Unfortunately, this time it’s no different. Maybe I don’t give my past self enough credit, because another playthrough has not improved my opinion of the game.

Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Grasshopper Manufacture
Released: October 31, 2024
MSRP: $24.99

I want to start by saying that Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is not “hella” remastered. It is barely remastered. I’m certain that some things have visually improved, but I don’t think the geometry has been touched. I’d call the textures “cleaned up,” but I’m pretty sure they’re the exact same ones but maybe less compressed. There were moments when it would do close-ups of some objects, and the surface was just smeared and blurry. 

Shadows of the Damned wasn’t a terrible-looking game for 2011, but it wasn’t impressive, either. It wasn’t intended as some sort of technical showcase. But why call it a remaster when it just looks like someone turned the settings up from High to Ultra? It has extra costumes and New Game+. It runs at 4K and 60fps. Some of the visual effects have been improved, but it still looks like Unreal Engine 3 piss. A port is fine, especially for the price. Maybe call it the “Hella Definitive Edition.” But if you want to call it remastered, at least put a rug down.

Anyway, Shadows of the Damned is about a guy and his talking gun descending into Hell to make dick jokes for several hours. Not that there’s a problem with dick jokes. Destructoid was founded on the principles of dick jokes. I just want you to be prepared for what you’re getting into.

Shadows of the Damned plays a bit like Resident Evil 4 if you suck some of the production values out of it. You play as demon hunter Garcia Hotspur as he takes his transforming pistol, Johnson, on a road trip through hell to rescue his girlfriend, Paula, from the Lord of the Underworld, Fleming. The goal is to reach a castle that always looms on the horizon, the Castle of Hassle.

That’s pretty much all there is to the story. You advance level by level and take out some baddies along the way. Much of the narrative meat is actually just backstory. Being a former demon himself, Johnson will explain the workings of the underworld while you occasionally come across books that reveal the pasts of the bosses you face. It’s not the most exciting storytelling, but it works. Its goal seems to be attempting a dark fairytale, but I don’t think that comes across very well.

However, the dialogue between Garcia and Johnson helps elevate it, so long as you can stomach the humor. It is packed with references to sex and genitalia, sometimes through double entendre and other times just overtly. Not all of it hits, and some of it completely missed me, but the duo is charming enough. They may not stop talking about their members and the members of others, but at least guys are able to bond over their dicks.

I wound up enjoying Garcia’s wholesome devotion to Paula. Although she’s heavily sexualized throughout the story, at one point even showing off her tits, Garcia is mostly just concerned with doing right by her. It’s a subtle trait that sometimes gets lost beneath the heaps of dick jokes, but it’s appreciable when it comes up.

When you get into the gameplay of Shadows of the Damned, it winds up being unspectacular. A largely linear affair with a heavy focus on combat without a real hook. A lot of the setpieces revolve around a darkness that will envelop the area, which will damage Garcia if he spends too much time in it, but otherwise, it’s headshots and weak points with a bit of dodging thrown in for good measure.

At least there’s gyro control for aiming. Or there is on the PS5 version, and I assume that’s true for the Switch. It helps in a lot of places, especially when you’re grappling with the Big Boner.

Everything about it is a mixed bag. The graphics are often really mundane and drab, then every so often you get an interesting character design. But then, even the interesting characters are smudged in dirt, which makes it difficult to really appreciate their design. It’s sort of the product of the generation it was released in.

The soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill) is pretty great, but like everything, it kind of gets lost. It doesn’t stand out as much as it should and winds up being easily forgotten. It’s easy to forget that this game was made by some of the industry’s greatest, because it’s just kind of flat.

I’m not the only one who thinks that, and I don’t just mean that by looking at the original run of reviews. The hella original version was published by EA, and if you want a feel for the dysfunction behind the scenes, it’s what gave Suda51 his grudge against former EA CEO, John Riccitiello. Suda hates the guy so much that he named an antagonist in later No More Heroes games after him – Damon Riccitiello. That was his name in Travis Strikes Again. He toned it down in No More Heroes, calling him Damon Ricotello, as if that hides the influence.

Shinji Mikami stated back in a 2012 interview with CVG that he thought Suda51’s “heart was broken” by the constant changes EA requested for Shadows of the Damned. He said it wasn’t the game that they had envisioned by the time it came out. It’s not like they could have fixed it in the Hella Remastered version, because they had to change so much. Instead, Suda took some of the early drafts and made the comic Kurayami Dance with Syuji Takeya.

That’s not to say that Shadows of the Damned couldn’t have appealed even with those circumstances. While I appreciate the creative vision and detest the business end of development, it doesn’t always doom a production. But regardless of it, Shadows of the Damned is rather bland, even with its constant dick-waving. Maybe I’m naive, but I can’t imagine it turning out this way without executive oversight. Obviously, Suda51 is proud enough about the game to consider it worth releasing again, even if it isn’t exactly a gloss-up.

I gave Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered a fair chance to win me over, but I feel the same way I did when I played it back in 2011: underwhelmed. It’s just now, all these years later, I’m a lot better at analyzing its problems and communicating them. It doesn’t help that the remaster is barely a remaster at all. The buddy relationship between Johnson and Garcia as well as Garcia’s devotion to Paula have their charm, and the dick jokes do a lot of heavy lifting. However, it’s difficult to get over just how grey and humdrum the underworld is.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}