Shadows of the Damned is a strange game. Not just because of its visuals, which are weird, or its story, which is deranged, but because of the way it comes together. Or doesn't. Shadows of the Damned is a game you might play and enjoy, but not necessarily because you'll enjoy playing it. The things it does best - the bizarre visuals, the fantastic soundtrack, the strange narratives and side stories - are largely removed from what you spend your time doing.
The premise to Shadows of the Damned is simple-ish, but again, strange. Garcia Hotspur's crazy (no, really, she's completely out of her mind) girlfriend Paula has killed herself, and the lord of Hell, Fleming, has claimed her as his own. So Garcia's off to the City of the Damned to get her back, with only his Johnson to help him.
Yes, that was a dick joke, and get used to it. Shadows of the Damned leaves no stone unturned in its quest to find (and f**k) every possible opening for a joke about a penis. It's not subtle. It's not even especially clever most of the time. But it tries to compensate by being as unabashed and gigglingly self-aware about it as possible. And it almost pulls it off, unless, of course, you're past laughing at genital humor. If that's the case, you'll want to get off at the next stop.
Mechanically speaking, Shadows of the Damned is a collection of strange, arcade shooter conceits stuffed into a game that seems like it's poking around the edges of a modern third person action game. Garcia wields Johnson, his former-demon-turned-swiss-army-knife-of-hell-knowledge-and-pain-dispersal companion, in one of three different weapon forms: a pistol, a shotgun, and a machine-gun. Johnson can also fire out a light-blast that has various effects – it incapacitates weaker enemies, and it can chase away darkness during one of Shadows of the Damned's many dark-light puzzle sequences.
The City of the Damned is frequently home to giant pockets of inky darkness that will slowly tear Garcia apart – it is called Shadows of the Damned, after all – unless, that is, he can figure out a way to chase it away. The particulars become more complicated over the course of Garcia's feel-good trip through the underworld. Early on, a quick light-shot into a mounted (but alive-ish) goat head is enough to clear it up, but later on you'll be shooting multiple balls of blood snaking vein-like off a central hub of darkness spewing demon pubes and… well. You get the idea.
The problem here is that none of this is particularly interesting. Combat feels clunky, which is a combination of issues perceptual and mechanical. The camera is zoomed in much too close to Garcia to have a good view of what's going on when he's aiming, and Garcia is yet another third-person shooter plagued by molasses arms. On normal difficulty, the only danger you'll ever really face are from enemies hitting you from off camera because your field of view is so small. Granted, you're not stuck in place while you're aiming, but otherwise, Shadows of the Damned plays like a game from 2005, not 2011.
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