“Johnson’s Boner can now turn into a HOTBONER! While holding aim, hold the secondary fire button to charge, then release it to deploy your sticky payload.”
Were that tutorial popup to appear in literally any other video game, it might raise an eyebrow or two. Yet by the time you’ve reached the relevant juncture in 2011’s Shadows of the Damned, you will have become completely desensitized to such double entendres (if they can even be called that).
Indeed, after five solid hours of “Aim for the Cracks” this and “One-Eyed William” that, it’ll hardly phase you when the barrel of your sentient revolver — named Johnson, because of course he is — extends to a prodigious length following a particularly steamy phone call. And those are the bits that could generously be deemed euphemistic!
There’s also plenty of in-your-face lasciviousness to go-around here, whether it’s a (nominally heroic) character remaking that his “stiffy” has been deflated at the sight of a scantily clad corpse erupting into a geyser of blood, or the moment wherein you traverse the cleavage of a giant sex worker’s while she simulates performing fellatio with her fingers. Initially, I tried keeping a log of all this NSFW content, but then I started to worry about what people would think of me if they happened to browse the notes section of my phone, and saw the words “Phallic Monster Fish” written in that precise order. So, I gave up and just surrendered to the lunacy.
Highway To Hell
If you’ve not played Grasshopper Manufacture’s exercise in unhinged juvenility before, then the best way I can describe it is that it feels like the product of a teenager’s pubescent imagination run wild. In it, you play as Garcia ‘Fucking’ Hotspur, a motorcycle-riding, gun-toting, alcohol-fueled lothario who is the scourge of the netherworld (feared by the very Prince of Darkness himself). He’s a demon hunter by trade, a master of hand-to-hand combat, and derives the same benefits from mainlining tequila that Popeye gets from guzzling down cans of spinach. Oh, and he is also on a quest to rescue his smoking-hot lingerie model girlfriend from the bowels of Hell.
Every female character this certified badass interacts with is, to some extent, romantically interested in him and every man either harbors a begrudging respect for him or otherwise quakes in their boots at his mere presence. He is, in short, a protagonist expressly designed to appeal to those with out-of-control hormones. Although, come to think of it, I dimly remember being 13 years old and am pretty sure that I’d have only felt crippling embarrassment if I were saddled with the name “Garcia Fucking Hotspur”. Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at it then, is that he’s the ideal masculine specimen as envisioned by the gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Anyway, the basic premise is that Garcia’s inamorata, Paula, has been kidnapped by the vengeful forces of evil (who’ve grown tired of him thinning their ranks up in the mortal realm) and now he’s on a warpath to get her back. Teaming up with his shapeshifting sidekick, Johnson — a rehabilitated demon capable of assuming the form of everything from a Harley-Davidson chopper to a skull-launching blunderbuss — he’s essentially got to hoof it from one end of Hell to the other.
As pointed out in one of the game’s many fourth wall breaks, this means that it’s kind of like a road trip story. Only instead of experiencing the joys of the American highway, Garcia & Johnson find themselves: clearing out putrid catacombs; frequenting supernatural red light districts; being pursued by a trio of grim reapers; and going toe-to-toe with a psychotic bird man who (for reasons known to the developers alone) exclusively communicates through screeched F-bombs.
It’s every bit as OTT and puerile as it sounds, resembling the video game equivalent of a Troma film. You can definitely see why creative writer Suda51 would go on to work with (a pre-mainstream success) James Gunn for the following year’s Lollipop Chainsaw, that’s for sure. Given their shared love of the perverse and the grotesque, it’s a veritable match made in heaven.
I Don’t Want To Grow Up
If the above description is even remotely appealing, then you’ll be pleased to learn that the new Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered has not sanded away any of those sharp edges. On the contrary, the non-stop dick jokes, profanity-laced dialogue, cultural stereotypes, leering eroticism, outrageous gore, and general bad taste has all been retained.
Which is a win for preservationists, of course, because you needn’t fret over the artist’s original intent getting lost in the update. This is Grasshopper Manufacture’s vision as it was always meant to be, neither defanged nor, as the case may be here, de-horned.
Whether that’s a good thing will largely depend upon your tolerance for edge-lord humor (or, as the press notes have the audacity to put it, “witty banter” and “bold forms of expression”). You see, there’s nothing clever about Shadows of the Damned’s writing, with the vast majority of its wisecracks boiling down to Garcia boasting about the size of his manhood. Occasionally it feels like these one-liners are supposed to be bawdy innuendos — based on how they’re delivered at least — but it’s as if somebody forgot to put any euphemistic substitutions in there. And thus what you end up with is people literally just talking about their cocks without any sense of irony or winking ambiguity.
Yet here’s the peculiar thing. Sometimes those puns are so witless and blunt that they come full circle and become kinda funny. It’s the Farrelly Brothers phenomenon. I won’t lie, I genuinely sniggered a fair few times during my playthrough. I’m not proud of it, but I didn’t know how else to react when Christopher went limp after I made him blow his entire load of ammunition. Because he’s like a penis! Get it?
As with any video game that relies on scripted comedy, the novelty of certain gags does wear thin once you’ve been subjected to them multiple times over (even the immortal “Taste My Boner” quip loses its appeal upon the 20th reprise) but there’s crucially enough of them here to keep you amused. In fact, I became so attuned to its dirty mind that, after a while, I started seeing sophomoric references where they may not have even been intended! For example, I found myself asking bizarre questions like: “Is the animation for lighting fireworks supposed to mimic a vigorous act of digital penetration?” and “Is that flower a knob, or has this game warped my fragile, innocent brain beyond repair?”
I guess that’s what you get when you have a title that considers absolutely everything through the prism of either shooting it or fucking it. And likewise views every woman in relation to the relative flaccidity of the nearest male erection. Which brings me to the one part of Shadows of the Damned’s nature that’s aged less endearingly: the icky chauvinism.
I’m all for a game that gives off the distinct impression it was directed by that one Tex Avery cartoon wolf that keeps yelling “awooga” whenever it sees a pretty lady. That’s totally harmless. But there’s something more off-putting about the way that every female character here is depicted as either a sexed-up babe, a wizened old crone, or repulsively obese. Sometimes transitioning from one to the other in the space of a cutscene!
At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy pearl clutcher, I’m also not sure why we have to watch our half-naked girlfriend get repeatedly torn open and decapitated, often while people make lewd comments about her newly-mangled physique. It’s a bit weird is all I’m saying and if you met someone who had these attitudes in-person you’d probably want to give them a wide berth.
To be clear, I’d never advocate for censorship or trying to alter the past with one of these remasters — and, for that very reason, I’m glad Grasshopper Manufacturer have stuck to their guns — however, there’s no getting around the fact that parts of Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered feel quite dated in the year 2024. Not only in terms of those relentless frat boy antics but also, it has to be said, with certain aspects of the design.
Old School Charms and Old School Jank
For what it’s worth, I actually had a fun 6 or 7 hours with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, in spite of its more objectionable elements. In some respects that dated quality can even be rather nostalgic.
It reminds me of the kind of short-but-sweet title you’d rent from Blockbuster Video back in the day, proceed to blitz through in a single weekend, and then never return to because you’d already digested all that it had to offer. Nevertheless, you’d look back on your brief time with it fondly.
For me, it belongs in the company of other quintessentially “7/10” releases from the Xbox 360 era like: Singularity; Resistance: Fall of Man; Enslaved: Odyssey to the West; or Dark Sector. All of which I hold in high esteem by the way. Sure, they weren’t ground-breaking by any stretch, but they delivered the goods when it came to satisfying gameplay and the same is true of Hella Remastered.
It’s a throwback to when action-adventure titles weren’t bogged down by excess baggage (like tedious crafting mechanics, or extraneous open-world busy work) and instead focused on delivering a tighter experience. Indeed, from a modern perspective, it’s refreshingly efficient and to the point when it comes to moving you from one gonzo set-piece to the next. All you do is blast away at monstrous hordes in linear environments, while your arsenal gradually expands and the scenarios you find yourself caught up in become increasingly elaborate. There’s no guff.
The first half in particular is densely packed with memorable moments, from the chapter wherein you have to ascend a tower by riding a huge chandelier (that, as a nice bonus, also smears enemies into a gloopy paste if you time your swings properly), to the on-rails shooting gallery that pits you against biomechanical kaiju, or the 2D bullet hell sections that look like the doodlings of a Tim Burton sketchbook. There’s even a bit where it basically turns into a protracted Evil Dead 2 homage and, as a horror fan, it’s impossible not to warm to that.
In short, there’s plenty of mad creative spark here. After he’s presumably taken a cold shower and got all that strange randiness out of his system, Suda51 can come up with some pretty cool ideas. His interpretation of the underworld is a highly unique one, for instance, replete with baby-faced hell spawn that won’t let you pass until you’ve fed them strawberries, and goat-headed lanterns that provide safe refuge from aggressors.
Granted, it can sometimes verge on being quirky for quirkiness’ sake but equally, there’s a fantastic boss battle that has you duking it out with a Minotaur whose every last move is accompanied by the strains of a harmonica he once swallowed in a previous life… And then he summons a gargantuan steed to his aid … Only to eat said horse at the end of his first phase …. Whereupon he then becomes 30 feet tall… And finally proceeds to urinate darkness that consumes the entire map.
And, you know what — within the logic of the in-game universe — that all just about makes sense! In the same way that the whacky rules of Beetlejuice make sense if you’re willing to go along for the ride.
As aforementioned, however, certain technical aspects do feel a tad clunky and could probably have done with updating. In the world of cinema there’s a very clear line between what constitutes a remake and what constitutes a remaster, but for us gamers those definitions are more fluid. For the avoidance of any doubt then, Grasshopper Manufacturer has plumped for the warts-and-all approach with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered.
There are a handful of new costumes, a long-requested New Game + feature and, if you’re on PS5, you can now use the DualSense motion controls to make micro-adjustments that make it easier to pull off those gratifying headshots. Otherwise, the core elements of design have been virtually untouched, leaving you to contend with the same old visual glitches, texture pop-ins, buggy animations, and frame rate dips. Not to mention, the over-the-shoulder camera still has a tendency to misbehave whenever the environments can’t properly accommodate it (especially if you’re locked into a cramped room with those massive electric guys).
All in all, what you get with this next-gen edition of Shadows of the Damned is a faithful restoration of a game that, for better or worse, has not grown up one iota in the past 13 years. It’s brash, dumb, and oftentimes fun, but you’ll need to be prepared for some stuff that frankly doesn’t hold up too well. Both in terms of its attitudes and its lack of technical polish.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered will be released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and Steam on October 31st. Review code supplied by NetEase Games and Grasshopper Manufacturer.