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When the original Shadows of the Damned launched in 2011, it stood out as a unique take on the horror action genre, since it infused so much of director Suda 51’s comic book punk-horror style and aesthetics into a game that looked and played like a later Resident Evil game, thanks to the influence of producer Shinji Mikami, and sounded like a Silent Hill game, thanks to composer Akira Yamaoka’s sound design.
The game’s bizarre, crude, and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor along with its general wackiness showed that horror action games don’t always have to take themselves so seriously, and it launched to pretty good reviews at the time, despite being compromised from the creator’s original vision by their big-budget publisher for the game, the infamous Electronic Arts (EA). Now, thirteen years later, Grasshopper Manufacture has decided to release a remastered version for modern platforms, since the game had been previously stuck on the Xbox 360 and PS3 only.
We won’t spend too much time talking about the game itself, since little has been changed from the original version here aside from a few small additions like bonus costumes and a new game+ mode, but I can definitely say the game has held up better than I thought it would. Aside from a few lines of the dialogue not aging particularly well, which don’t really lessen the enjoyment of the game overall, it’s still a blast to play. Shadows of the Damned‘s unique brand of horror action still stands as an unconventional take on the style, and as something that could’ve only resulted from a collaboration between its three main creative minds.
That said, the visuals for this remastered version generally haven’t been touched in any way aside from having higher resolution and framerate than the original, with only some very minor texture cleanup, so it still looks very much like a game from 2011, rough spots and all. However, its charm still shines through and generally makes some of its small rough spots easily-overlooked on the visual front.
Aside from the visual datedness, there’s also still a lot of rough edges in the form of bugginess, much of which was present in the original game as well, and it treads a fine line between being slightly annoying but also amusing and charming at the same time. Though, this is fairly common for Grasshopper’s games in general and if you’re on board with their style at all, you’ll most likely be accepting of the strangeness of their style and un-polished nature of their games.
Some of this bugginess might be patched at some point before launch or shortly thereafter, and it would be nice to see a few of those rough edges ironed out, but they may choose not to change much so as not to tamper with the game experience itself.
The performance on the Xbox Series consoles and PC were very solid across the board, but the PS5 version had some massive framerate issues that should be fixed before launch, judging by how those things usually go. The improved performance definitely helps with a lot of the enemy encounters where things can start to get overwhelming, and where dropped frames can become a source of frustration during combat.
As far as the controls, they do feel more smooth and responsive in general because of the improved performance, but the aiming still feels slightly hard to wield at times when using a controller, especially given the jumpy nature of the game’s enemies. On the PC front, it’s very nice to be able to use keyboard and mouse controls for this game after all these years, and it makes the aiming feel much nicer if you’re able to play on your PC. The PS5 version also added gyro aiming, which is fun to try out and it may be your thing, but with how fast the action of the game is and how precise the aiming needs to be, you’ll likely find yourself not playing with it for too long.
At the end of the day, Shadows is still a hell of a lot of fun and a relatively snappy adventure, at around 7 or 8 hours for a first playthrough, and its style carries it through the whole way, still playing like a punked-up and even more gothic version of Resident Evil 4 with a Silent Hill-esque soundscape.
Especially for the very reasonable price tag, Hella Remastered is definitely worth picking up if you’ve never played it before or are just looking for an excuse to play it again on a new platform. It didn’t innovate the genre and isn’t the most shiny and polished game of its kind, but its individualistic sense of creativeness makes it a journey that’s still worth taking all these years later.
(8.5 / 10)
Great
(8.5 / 10)Rely on Horror Review Score Guide
Review codes for Xbox Series, PS5, and PC provided by the publisher and developer, NetEase Games and Grasshopper Manufacture.
