| Author | Review |
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Vinicius Menti
180,732
TA Score for this game: 1,484
Posted on 10 October 11 at 17:19, Edited on 26 April 12 at 19:07 |
This review has 26 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
First of all, let me make it clear that I was not familiar with Grasshoper’s work or its CEO, known as “Suda51”.
Suda’s most famous work in the West is "No More Heroes”, so yes I had heard of that game but, as the Xbox 360 version of No More Heroes was only released in Japan, I never got to play it.
Even though I did not know much about Suda’s work, the fact that he was teaming up with ex-Resident Evil boss Shinji Mikami and ex-Silent Hill boss and composer Akira Yamaoka had me excited in anticipation, specially because the first trailers showed me a game with unique colors and visuals and a nice touch of cocky and funny B-movie horror with a Resident Evil 4 control scheme and camera (third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective).
The story itself is your Dante’s Inferno drama with a twist, as your lover is killed and taken to the City of the Damned by Fleming, the Lord of Demons itself. In this story the protagonist is not to blame for his girl’s demise and capture like in the Dante's Inferno game, though, and Paula's suffering after being kidnapped is depicted in a very laughable and B-movie-like manner.
Differently from many games the game starts without asking you about the difficulty you want to play. Instead, you are thrown into the action after a beautiful CG introduction and you get your run-of-the-mill tutorial to start playing. I felt the controls were good and the graphics during CG and normal gameplay were very color-rich and appropriate to the game.
Right at the introduction you get a feel of all characters. Mexican demon hunter Garcia Hotspur is the kind of funny foul-mouthed hero that makes you laugh, especially with a companion like Johnson, a talking skull that is also a Jack of all trades: motorcycle, torch and multiple guns, which you unlock by feeding him new gems. His girlfriend, Paula, is found hanging in his apartment, surrounded by demons, and then you see her being kidnapped by Fleming. After some struggle Garcia eventually loses her to Fleming and decides to pursue the Lord of Demons to rescue Paula, even if he has to go to Hell.
The game is rated M for a reason. I had heard about the excess use of dick jokes in the game and, yes, this felt a bit too silly to me in the beginning, but the game sold me after I decided to abandon sanity and plunge into its crazy Suda51 world. The game also has several sex references like a Demon Strip Club and billboards showing demon-girls in sexy positions, but it all makes sense within the game's idea of Hell. It's a colorful Hell filled with lust for flesh, in both senses of that word. And there are also some books you find that either Garcia or Johnson read out loud that tell crazy fables that contribute to the game's unique esthetics, like one story about “The Man Who Never Had His Fill”, which talks about a man who never stopped eating/making sex but was never satisfied and kept losing weight.
Additionally, you get to kill enemies with lots of blood effects and dismemberment, and that is a very fun part of the action. The game also has a light/shadow mechanic that forces you to bring light to a room by, for example, shooting light into a goat head (yes, a goat!) and, even though many people will shout “Alan Wake did it!”, this is actually used in a very nice and particular way and it adds a lot to the gameplay, as your health is drained by the darkness in this realm, which is quite different from regular darkness, and enemies are invincible when you are surrounded by darkness.
After the game’s prologue, you get to a screen where you get to choose your difficulty level. You get Lemon Hunter, Demon Hunter and Legion Hunter, which are, respectively, easy, normal and hard. And if you finish the game once, you get a wondeful reward....Satanic Hell difficulty. Not for the faint of heart, I assume, but I have not tried that one. I have finished it on Legion Hunter though and, even if it is not too difficult, the fact that buying upgrades for your character costs more when you choose harder difficulties makes the game a bit more challenging.
Addtionally, the game itself is short, specially if you play on normal or easy, but there is plenty of replayability if you, like me, wants to get the full 1000 gamerscore for this game, as you have to play it three times due to the fact that the difficulty-related achievements are non-stackable. There is also an achievement for getting all possible upgrades (by buying/finding red gems), but a glitch in the game that allows you to get a very large number of red gems early in the game made this challenge less daunting, as it is almost impossible to get all gems in Normal/Hard and I was short a few gems when playing the game for the first time, on easy.
There were many moments in the game when I was greatly amazed and surprised. The boss battles feel incredible because of the whole craziness that surrounds the game and the fact that you keep seeing your girl die in endless manners actually makes that become funny. There is one boss battle where the enemy’s horse and the enemy itself reminded me of "Gulliver's Travels", more specifically that part in Jonathan Swift's book where Gulliver pees to put out a fire. There is even a boss that eats its own heart to become stronger!
The game's sound effects are good and its soundtrack is really amazing, as one would expect from the man behind Silent Hill soundtracks. I even wish I had received the game's soundtrack that came as a pre-order bonus!
Overall, the game may not reinvent the wheel but it introduces enough funny and crazy moments with decent gameplay and a decent list of achievements (47 are easy, 3 are hard or time-consuming), so I definitely recommend Shadows of the Damned for anyone who loves games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or any of Suda51’s previous titles.
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CheesusCrackers
85,356
TA Score for this game: 799
Posted on 24 June 11 at 11:46 |
This review has 15 positive votes and 4 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
In the interest of full disclosure, i have not yet completed this game. I am close though. I was skeptical of this game, and the pre-order bonus did not interest me, so i waited till the day after the release to pick it up. Why? There has been a lot of CRAP released lately (Bethesda, I'm talking to you, taking me to the Brink of the Demon's Forge).
I waited for the reviews. Based on what i saw, i was willing to give it a shot. As you all know, the synopsis, Demon Hunter kills demons, pisses off the head demon, head demon steals girl, demon hunter has to find girl. Sounds like an episode of "Supernatural".
The grainy video and music really add to the atmosphere. Controls are tight enough, though for you out there expecting aim assist, you are on your own. I started off changing the aim speed to fit my style, then didn't have any more control issue from there.
The game is generally fun to play, in fact i enjoy it very much. Having purchased F3AR at the same time, the fun factor is on par with both games. Now, while i said it was generally fun, in my opinion, there are some "developer" shortcuts as i like to call them. This is where they throw in some additional challenges that tend to suck the fun out. There are a few places where you are chased by "instant death", i don't know about you, but i didn't find that to be very fun. I like to be challenged, but i don't like to be slaughtered. Also, some of the levels become VERY repetitive and annoying. (Side scrolling, Big Boner to name a few). I think some folks just got real lazy.
Generally, it's kill enemies, collect "currency", buy upgrades, wash rinse, repeat. There are more than an average number of boss fights, that do require a little strategy and thought. The use of "dark" and "light" powers does add a little twist, while i initially viewed this as a negative, it grew on me as i played.
I found most of the levels to be ok designed. The ones i considered to be bad, some people will like. The side scrolling levels were poorly designed in my opinion, and the controls take a hit during these. While i found them to be a nice change of pace, that quickly fades to disgust for me.
I did not like the fact that if you don't explore an area completely, it's easy to make the wrong decision an completely miss upgrade gems. Once you jump down, or climb a ladder, you typically can't go back. With no real indication of the direction you should go, this tends to zap the fun. I know this was done to encourage repeat play-thru, but cheap none the less.
All in all, with it's occasional lazy design, it's not a bad game. Compared to some of the half-baked crap being released this year, you should find a strong offering that is minimal on the bugs. That alone should make folks happier. Less experienced gamers may take longer on the campaign, those who have played the genre before may want to try it out from Redbox, Gamefly, or their local game rental location.
This game does not take itself serious, and you will pick up on several jokes at older movies (i.e. the ghost in the library ala Ghostbusters movie). Probably not a game for pre-teen kids, as the language is rough, but that's a parent decision not mine to make.
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Kaiser Flaco
85,145
TA Score for this game: 875
Posted on 25 June 11 at 16:07, Edited on 26 June 11 at 23:50 |
This review has 12 positive votes and 7 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Suda51 returns with the outlandish Shadows of the Damned, a collaboration with the director of the Resident Evil series, Shinji Mikami. Most recently, Mikami graced us with the enjoyable, if short, Vanquish of last year, and on paper, it’s hard to predict the angle Shadows of the Damned would go for. Something along the lines of Killer7, maybe, with the horror toned up and that wacky plot toned way down. Or maybe a faster, Bayonetta-cum-Viewtiful Joe-styled shooter in the same vein as Vanquish. Playing the finished product, the result is far from either, yet fits into the Suda canon as one might not expect.
Garcia Hotspur, the protagonist of Shadows of the Damned, is not as immediately likeable as some of Suda’s other creations. His story sees him and former demon Johnson travel into Hell to save his girlfriend Paula. His Hispanic twinge adds a nice touch of personality to risqué lines that would come off as sleazy otherwise, but in many scenes his one-track mind, every other speech punctuated with “Paula?”, can drag. Likewise, Johnson is an undeniable funny companion, though his cheeky English accent can border on grating.
SotD offers little new in terms of gameplay. While not as on-rails as Killer7, it’s certainly linear, and any exploration is only a side-track to find red gems used to upgrade weapons. The shooting mechanics seem at first clunky and unreliable, though the game makes up for this in its weapons; Johnson himself transforms into a multitude of guns for Garcia to use, and even the simple pistol and shotgun truly feel like they connect with the enemy. The game employs a ‘darkness’ mechanic where demons must be rid off their invulnerability with a ‘light shot’ before they can be killed, and in some areas the darkness will steadily reduce Garcia’s health. It works well, and it feels harsh to comment that there’s no attempt at reinvention of tried-and-true mechanics here, but Shadows of the Damned is the sort of game that revels in its own unoriginality with a wry smile.
In fact, Suda and Mikami have taken this joyful self-awareness to a new extent. The game is genuinely funny in many places, in a playful and self-mocking manner. “Remind me if I have to fuck a horse to unlock a door”, quips Garcia after learning that shooting a hanging goat’s head dispels the darkness from the game world. Later, while rummaging through the darkness, Johnson notes that eating human hearts dotted around the level increase the health meter. Garcia comments, “I’m not even going to ask how that makes sense”. It works in a way that no other videogame’s awareness of self hasn’t before, and provides more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. However, many throwaway lines from Johnson will not be to everyone’s tastes, as the humour is usually crude with penis and tit jokes aplenty.
Fans of previous Suda games, especially Killer7, will be interested in the game’s soundtrack. It’s no secret that SotD’s collaboration also extends to the sound designer of the Silent Hill series, and there’s little here that disappoints. Full of hard rock mixed with creeping guitar strings, the sounds are perfect for the mood. In fact, the game’s soundtrack contributes to a greater sense, along with one of the game’s opening lines that the two chief characters are about to make “their very own road movie”, that this is the creative team’s indulgence; that this is a game made just as much for them as it is for us.
Rather unapologetically, it isn’t a game for everyone. Players unaccustomed to Suda’s style will be left in the dust, the humour is childish, the plot often idiotic. There are boss fights reminiscent of past Resident Evil games, but for many, they will prove to be the game’s most interesting aspect. Shadows of the Damned’s charm lies in its ridiculousness, the banter between Johnson and Garcia, the hilarious backstory given for each boss. There is a sense of disappointment that neither creative mind wanted to continue with the type of quiet revolution to videogames that began with Viewtiful Joe and Killer7 and could still be seen hidden away in Bayonetta and Vanquish, that pinnacle of gaming with an outlandish plot that’s held together by an air-tight script, is as stylish as it is funny, and more involving than any movie. Shadows of the Damned is far from exceeding the sum of its parts, and perhaps, in years to come, it will be looked back on as a short detour in this process, a necessary product of self-indulgence before the true creative genius is put into gear again. For many, this will prove an enjoyable, if short, respite. Perhaps not quite worth the price tag that inevitably comes from its status as an EA publication, but for fans of Suda (and I do hazard to say only Suda), they may find themselves settling at home in his depiction of hell.
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CRAZE KILER
449,806
TA Score for this game: 832
Posted on 30 October 11 at 01:59 |
This review has 7 positive votes and 2 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
In celebration of Halloween I decided to rent Shadows of the Damned. The game definately fits the purpose of my renting it but does that mean Shadows is a good game.
The graphics for the game are perfect for the setting. The graphics do not look perfect but thats what the devolpers were going for. There is a grainy look to the game but the presentation is what I could imagine the underworld to look like.
As usual I am not going to give away any plot points but the story is something we have seen many times. The hero of the game is a hispanic person and his weapon has a personallity. For the most part the game is full of adult jokes and puns. Luckily unlike most games they do not repeat the same jokes over and over. There is also a great deal of foul language and some nudity, so if you have teenagers be wary if you sensor what they watch/play.
The gameplay took me a while to get use to. Not that the controls are tricky but your gun has two functions. The obvious function is to shoot enemies and the other is to shoot light. The reason why you'll need to shoot light is becuase throughout the game you are encountered with darkness (which will kill you after a while), there are various ways to get out of the darkness, the most common way is to shoot a goat lamp with the light. There will be times you'll need to enter the darkness in order to see enemies weak spots or a few other reasons throughout the game. At first the darkness was an annoyance but eventually I got over it and as I progressed I got use to it and began using it as a tool.
There is a variety of different styles of levels and scenery changes throughout the game. There is one level where you have the "Big Boner" where your on a platform and you'll have enemies running/walking down an alley and will kill you instantly if they reach the platform. There are three rounds of this, each round has more alley for the enemies to walk down. There are also a few side scroller level that are completely unnecessary. I dont think they add anything to the game (but there is a boss battle during the third side scrolling level). To me these levels took away from the game but I do give them credit for trying to add some diversification to their game.
There are three kinds of guns you can use; a pistol, machine gun and a shot gun. As you progress through the game, after you beat a boss, you'll get forced upgrades to your gun. For example the pistol can shoot an explosive on the enemy and use a standard round to detonate it. You also can get red diamonds that you use to upgrade your guns, health, etc.
There is several different enemies you'll encounter and there are a lot of boss fights. Each of them have a different weakness and behave differently. It was nice to play a survival horror game and not fight waves of the same enemy.
There is no multiplayer included with this game and to be honest there isn't a need for it.
The main issue with this game is the achievement list. You can get all but two achievements in the game during one playthrough. There is your typical beat the game on easy, medium and hard. The issue with that here is the achievements are not stackable, which means you have to do three playthroughs for the full 1000. The rest of the achievements took no imagination. You'll get one for beating each level, for beating each boss fight and for getting x-amount of kills with each gun. The problem with the gun achievements is that if you dont get the amount of kills with the gun before your forced upgrade you'll have to play through again to get it. One good thing about the achievements is the names. Having an achievement called the Big Boner fits perfectly with the humor of the game.
The last thing about the game that may annoy some people is that the hero is steriotyped by his race. An example to regain you health you drink tequilla.
At the end of the day I would recommend this game to people that are fans of the genre. The only reason why this is not a 5 star game is becuase of the side scroller levels and the lack of an imaginative achievment list.
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Balsin Fase
143,793
TA Score for this game: 1,099
Posted on 01 August 11 at 20:47 |
This review has 8 positive votes and 6 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
When you put Suda 51, Shinji Mikami, and Akira Yamaoka in one place, amazing things should happen. These are some heavy hitters in the industry, at least as far as games I like go. I’m talking the creators of Killer 7, Resident Evil, No More Heroes, and the man behind the incredible music of Silent Hill. When talk began that these guys were working on a game together, I got pretty excited. Now that I’ve run through that product, Shadows of the Damned, all I’ve got to say is…it was okay.
Before you get all worked up about me coming to the game with unfair expectations, I’d like to point out that after watching a lot of the preview videos, I had pretty much no hope for this game. I was more excited about it when I knew nothing about it than I was after I’d seen screenshots and video. When it was just some product of my imagination, it seemed boundless in how cool it could be. When I watch an ugly video about a demon hunter, I lost almost all interest in the game. I only picked it up because I trusted the guys making it, hoping that playing it would turn my indifference around.
The game stars Garcia Hotspur, demon hunter, running off into the underworld to save his kidnapped girlfriend, Paula, from a demon named Flemming. Flemming. Go read that name again. F-l-e-m-m-i-n-g. This seems to have come from the same camp that thought giving Solid Snake a moustache was a cool idea (The only thing that made that work was the fact that Snake makes wearing a box look awesome). It’s not the most interesting story in the world, but thankfully it doesn’t intrude too much so the fact that it’s kind of lame doesn’t harm the game.
The demons are actually pretty stock looking, at first. Most of them are a little fleshier than zombies, but that’s pretty much all that they are. After a few levels, though, they start to get a little bit more interesting. You get different types of armor on certain enemies that keep you form just plugging away at them, as well as tougher enemies that can only be hit on weak points that are actually something other than their heads or eyes. Mind you, most of their weak spots glow bright red and are exposed when they’re stunned, but what can you do? Beats guessing where you have to hit them. There is quite a bit of variety in enemies, though, while still being different enough that you can tell their behavior when you run into them again.
Which makes the combat sound pretty solid, doesn’t it? It is pretty good, but from the guys who made it, I expected something more. Given that all of the guns in Resident Evil 4 have such a vicious punch, I expected the guns in this game to hit like trucks when you fired them. Every shotgun shell in Resident Evil was an event, a catastrophic explosion of gore while showing a character movement that gave the gun a real sense of weight and power. The guns in Shadows of the Damned, though, all seem to suffer from the problem that laser guns in games commonly do: no power. They do damage to the enemies and kill them, but you get no real sense of stopping power. The enemies rarely even flinch from getting hit, and short of them dying in one hit, they never give you much satisfaction when you put one down. This is a common problem I have with shooters, but I doubt it bothers many people as much as it bothers me.
The bosses are good and plentiful. You get one about every two levels, and while most of them fall into a pattern of stun, then shoot, they all have some real differences to them. You fight giant birds, a horseback rider that devours parts of his horse to get stronger, a sidescrolling bullet-hell-like monster, and a couple of other neat creatures. The character design on them was top-notch.
The music, though? Holy moley. Akira Yamaoka is someone who has always done incredible work with the guitar, providing some of the most eerie music I’ve ever heard. You can tell that he was excited to work on this project, too, as each piece is incredible. I stopped and just listened to the background music in almost every stage, enjoying the haunting tunes this man can create. He didn’t stop at just ambient tracks either, making a great opening theme song that I liked so much that I restarted the game a few times just to hear it.
The thing is the music…doesn’t fit. This game feels more like it needs music that is a little bit more rock than subtle. It all sounds really good, but the action game you’re playing just doesn’t feel like it’s a really good fit for the music he created. It’s always a joy to listen to any of it when it plays, and there is a lot of creativity and variance in what he does with it, but the stage music just doesn’t seem like it belongs in this game. If this was a more quiet horror game, it would be perfect, but as far as action goes, it just feels like the man’s talents are being wasted. Just a bit, though.
If Yamaoka was trying his hardest, it seems like the other two were coming up slack. This game may play like Mikami’s old Resident Evil stomping grounds, but it lacks a lot of the tension that made those games great. This game is built to play like Resident Evil 4, but the demons lack the relentless nature and cunning of the Ganados. When they hit you, they hurt a lot, but you never feel the tension you did in the older games. With the ability to move and fight being added, they may have been trying to keep the action a bit more intense, but it fell a little flat with me. It’s hard to pin down why it didn’t feel right, but trust me when I say that if you’ve played both, you’ll notice the difference. You might not have come to this game to play something like Resident Evil 4, but the combat is so similar and yet so much weaker that it’s hard not to compare them.
But Suda 51's script will save the day, right? That one people are saying is genuinely funny, and not just in a video game way? Well, if you thought Duke Nukem Forever was juvenile, prepare for more of the same. I’m not sure who it was out there that decided that penis jokes were adult appropriate humor and poop jokes weren’t, but he needs to go. This game has a unique main character in Garcia, a tattooed, foul mouthed Mexican, but the creativity seems to stop there. Beyond that, it’s hoped that a few dirty words and double-entendres will keep the dolts entertained all the way through. Apparently it worked. I got a kick out of it, but the whole thing was soured a bit by the double standard being held for it and Duke Nukem Forever.
I had fun with this game in the long run, but overall, I wasn’t all that impressed with it, given the pedigree of the people behind it. As it stands, it’s a competent third person shooter with some great music and decent ideas. There are some funny jokes throughout it, but if you’re expecting the laugh-out-loud game that people are talking about, you may want to keep right on walking.
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ryanlegend95
135,357
TA Score for this game: 1,049
Posted on 27 July 12 at 01:02, Edited on 14 November 12 at 19:16 |
This review has 4 positive votes and 5 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Well this is a different perspective of hell.
Hell usually takes the image of a scary and dark place with lots of fire.
This time it looks medieval with lots of buildings. Oh and a pub.
Shadows of the damned brings you to hell in a very new way. Which is interesting. Very interesting. In case you are wondering. This game isn't scary. In fact it's funny. Like saints row funny.
It goes without saying that this game is weird. But it's actually pretty good. What's even better is that there are three well known directors. There's the director who did no more heroes. Then there's the director who created the resident evil franchise. And then there's the sound director from silent hill. Pretty nifty I say
In this game you play as Garcia Hotspurr who is a veteran demon hunter. He hates demons and wants to get rid of all of them. The problem is, is that he has killed one to many so now the demons are after him and he's so called girlfriend (he just picked her up). Garcia meets the head of the demon world (called fleming) and tries to kill him but he is too powerful for his puny boner (name of the gun). Now that he has angered him even more. Fleming steals Garcia's girlfriend to hell and Garcia basically follows them to hell to save his beloved.
Now here's a new perspective of a review.
Graphics:
The graphics are fine but it looks pretty old though. The textures are bland and animations are stiff. There are some pop ins and some of the character models look boring or just plain ugly but could be the developer's intention. But at least it has pretty good frame rate and the new look for hell is pretty charming.
I give the graphics score a 6/10
Sound:
The sound is actually pretty impressive. It's just as weird as silent hill and that's a good thing.
The voice acting is nicely done but sometimes can be over exaggerated. The sound effects rock and the ambient sounds are creepy but yet intriguing. The soundtrack is also very suiting.
I give the sound score a 9/10.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is a little dated. Movement is stiff and aiming is weird. Even though the aiming is very much like resident evil, you feel like you don't have a lot control over it. Even though that you can move at the same time, the aiming just feels clunky. But at least the guns are creative and fun to use and there are some pretty satisfying combat sequences and puzzles. Unfortunately there are a number of glitches and there is no new game + to carry over your upgrades which brings down the replay value.
I give the gameplay score a 6.5/10
Storyline:
The storyline is silly. But that's good if your looking for a bit of comedy. The story is very funny which makes the little things interesting but you would be surprised on how much the game makes sense.
I give the storyline a 7/10 because it's fun and silly. Which is rare in games.
Overall I think the game is unpolished. It definitely needs more work but I still found it fun to play. I give the game an overall score of 7/10
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