The Average Gamer
Home / Reviews / Action / Shadows of The Damned Hands-On Preview

Shadows of The Damned Hands-On Preview

This game is really fucking weird. It’s also everything you would expect if you’ve seen that Enlarge Your Johnson trailer. Not quite as cheesy and game-show-like but not far off at all.

Throughout Shadows of The Damned You play Garcia Hotspur, on a mission to save his girlfriend from god-knows-what terrible fate at the hands of the wise-cracking Big Bad. As is frequently the case with these situations, rape jokes abound like “Help her because in the meantime, I’ll be helping myself.” It may be that the setting represents Hotspur’s personal hell or whatever mitigating story you care to make up but let’s gloss quickly over that issue and onto the game itself, shall we?

Linear Levels

I’m very much an explorer when it comes to games, hence my disdain for levels that are nothing but a glorified corridor. Shadows of The Damned is indeed designed around walking down a long and twisty hallway but there are enough side-alleys and rewards for poking your nose in dark corners to keep me happy. You will run into invisible walls everywhere, to the extent that Hotspur won’t even try to step over ankle-high rubble strewn in the streets. It’s irritating for sure, but the rest of the game is solid enough that you can accept it for what it is – an character-focused action horror with a rockin’ soundtrack and a really lame sense of humour.

Punchy Protagonists

Hotspur is the no-nonsense leader dedicated to saving his woman. He’s single-minded in his pursuit and has a lovely way asking “What the fuck?” just as you would when confronted with the demonic truth about strawberries.

Johnson is a fiery floating skull and Hotspur’s guide the Underworld. He shows you the ropes, provides commentary and is somehow your gun, melee weapon and motorcycle all at once. He’s more petulant assistant Shaun Hastings from Assassin’s Creed than supportive buddy Morte from Planescape Torment, so the dialogue can get cringeworthy at times. Still, as you walk through the dingy streets and dank hallways filled with nude, mutilated, leather-trussed corpses (inevitably female, of course), the cheesy banter between Johnson and Hotspur perfectly relieves the tension in the game’s malevolent setting. You’ll find yourself chuckling and rolling your eyes in equal measure.

Johnson starts out with the ability to transform into a bullet-shooting pistol or a fire-shooting pistol. As you travel, you’ll pick up white or red crystals. Gather enough and you get to upgrade, unlocking melee weapons and bigger guns. If I recall correctly, you can also upgrade Hotspur’s skills to make him harder, faster or stronger.

Brains and Brawn

When it comes to puzzle-solving, there’s nothing in the first couple of chapters that you’ll find too challenging, assuming you have two brain cells to bang together. Environments have a couple of modes – light, where you wander around and some monsters pop out at you, and dark, where you slowly take damage from the oppressive atmosphere and stronger monsters pop out at you. Certain objects are only usable in the darkness and others in the light. For the most part, your puzzles will involve locating eyeballs or strawberries and feeding them to disembodied baby heads nestling in doors made of demon pubes. Hey, I told you the game was weird.

Johnson does have an irritating habit of shouting the solutions at you before you’ve even realised that there was a problem. There’s no excuse for getting stuck. These puzzle sections do serve to break up the monotony of walking between firefights and the damage inflicted on you in dark sequences lends a nice sense of urgency to what would otherwise be quite dull and repetitive combat.

The monsters are a lovely bunch. For the most part I battled the shambling, dehydrated zombie-types seen at 1:10 of the trailer. They move slow but can take you down quick if more than a couple get close to you at once. The game features a pretty fun limb damage model with a useful aim-assist. Shoot the zombies in the head and they go down instantly. Shoot them repeatedly in the torso and they’ll keep coming but if you take out a leg they’ll drop the floor and be easy enough to escape. You can also take out both upper limbs, leaving them armless. They won’t be able to hurt you either.

The boss battles are good fun. I won’t spoil anything for you but I will say that the environment and a range of weapon damage types will make things much easier. Each boss will take more time and repetition than I really enjoy but plug away and you’ll get there eventually.

In Summary

Shadows of The Damned is a surprisingly enjoyable action-horror, if a little bit rapey for my tastes. Be sure to check out the demo when it’s available. The game will be released in the UK on June 24th. Preorder it from Amazon.co.uk for £37.91.