Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered PS5 Review. Shadows of the Damned hit my radar shortly after it launched in 2011. I didn’t know what to expect from it. I saw it on a shelf in my local rental store and took a chance. What I found was a great time; I didn’t quite know why I loved it, but I ran with it anyway.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that Shinji Mikami was involved in the making of Shadows of the Damned. I also didn’t know who Shinji Mikami was, a blasphemous concept in hindsight for any gamer. Either way, even with the refresher of this game’s shortcomings, it’s great to see this game made available for a modern audience.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered Review (PS5) – Getting A Rise Out Of A Cult Classic
Like I said above, I hadn’t played Shadows of the Damned in 13 years or so. Booting up the game again felt like a refreshing wave of nostalgia combined with a realistic removal of my rose-colored glasses. This game is a product of its time, but it’s aged rather well, considering its type of humor.
The game is absolutely filled with sexual innuendo, but it rarely makes jokes at anyone’s expense. Not all lines land either, but the majority of them still had me giggling like a pre-teen watching South Park for the first time. Shadows of the Damned brings some healthy substance to the table as well. In a lot of ways, this is a loose reimagining of Dante’ Inferno but with dick jokes as Garcia Hotspur descends into hell to retrieve his beloved.
Much like the early stand-up from Bo Burnham, the funny bits outweigh the serious ones. When those serious points appear, these moments hit just enough to bring some human emotion into the mix. Plus, your skull-and-weapon companion, Johnson, helps balance Hotspur nicely. This generates some great banter between the two. It’s a nice injection of humanity that helps keep the journey feeling legitimate, even among all of the goofiness and sex jokes.
Define “Remaster”
As we’ve all seen, games that release under the classification of “remaster” can be a simple copy and paste of the original game, a massive overhaul on all fronts, or anything in between. This Hella Remastered version of Shadows of the Damned is closer to a copy of the original game with just a bit of improvement.
Visually, nothing about the game is rebuilt or altered when it comes to said visuals or the gameplay. In direct comparison, the difference between the PS3 and the remastered version is that the remaster cleans up many of the game’s textures. In fact, the PS3 version appears foggy in comparison.
However, unlike the remaster for Lollipop Chainsaw, the maps themselves didn’t get quite as much improvement as the characters and enemies did. In some places, the scenery looks much better. However, many times, especially while in cutscenes, a piece of scenery in the foreground stands out glaringly with deeply low resolution.
Another reason why I believe this is a copy and paste is how some points in the game drop frame rate randomly. These points aren’t high octane ones either. They appear when some sections of the environment show up, like the random mass of organs and boxes pictured below. Granted, these never hold back the experience or your ability to perform (Sorry, I had to).
Either way, Shadows of the Damned is 13 years old and was featured on hardware two generations ago. Seeing these kinds of issues come up, no matter how insubstantial, shows signs of limited optimization for the PS5.
Not Just A Cash Grab
The biggest point of improvement with this remaster is New Game+. Before this, each new playthrough required you to start fresh with your upgrades. Now, you can take your upgrades into successive playthroughs and blast through enemies. This makes for a welcome addition indeed, since the lack of New Game+ stood out as a significant shortcoming in the original release.
Controls remain the same in the remaster. Movement is still a bit tanky by design, and the dodging mechanics remain mostly broken. You can also only dodge in four directions. This advantage comes in the form of a long barrel roll animation on top of invincibility through the entire roll sequence. To boot, you can use the roll to interrupt some attacks.
With that said, there is one aspect of the controls that surprised me: motion controls. Move the controller while aiming a gun, and the reticle moves with your motions. Additionally, the game also provides settings to adjust the motion sensitivity while aiming, making this a welcome addition to the formula without changing a great deal of the game.
All in all, this might not seem like a major re-release of a PS3 era game. However, Shadows of the Damned is no longer available on digital storefronts. Furthermore, the remaining physical versions are either used versions for PS3 and 360 or used from when resellers ultimately sell off the Limited Run Games release in the coming months. As a preservationist, I live for releases like this, providing accessibility on new hardware as well as another means of experiencing the game at all.
A Cult Classic For A Reason
While this release of the game, Shadows of the Damned Hella Remastered does very little to improve the original game. Apart from adding in motion controls for aiming and cleaning up textures, the game remains essentially the same. While controls are dated and tanky, they don’t hinder the experience enough to diminish any enjoyment of the game. Optimization isn’t the best, with several random and low-impact spots on the map reducing frame rates. Still, the journey through Hell with Garcia Hotspur is still a good old time, especially at $25.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered releases on October 31, 2024, for PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, and Steam.