Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered review – Spoilers: it’s hella awesome

Garcia Hotspur and his girlfriend Paula are living a peaceful life. But the demons of hell have a vendetta against Garcia and kidnap Paula, taunting Garcia to enter the depths of the underworld to save her from Fleming, the Lord of Demons. Shadows of the Damned was somewhat of a cult classic during the first HD generation. It had a punk rock flare similar to some of the team’s other work like No More Heroes. What you’re getting with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is for the most part, that original game with some small bells and whistles. This was my first time playing Shadows of the Damned and I’m upset I didn’t play it sooner.

As I said, Shadows of the Damned is a third-person shooter. You use Garcia’s gun and companion, Johnson, to make your way through hell. Defeat demons using your small but strong arsenal of weapons, navigate areas using light and dark based puzzles, all the while every character cracks tons of jokes filled with innuendos. What you get is a silly romp through hell with Garcia and Johnson cracking wise or being so fucking vulgar. The humor might be juvenile but the delivery of these lines can be so good, you can’t help but snicker and giggle the entire time. I think what I appreciate most about the humor is that it contextualizes gameplay mechanics. You could do what any other game does with a checkpoint system but in this game, checkpoints are indicated by a little winged-demon called One-Eyed William. He is Johnson’s aunt’s first husband’s adopted son from Ukraine. When you get near him he drops a deuce and flies away. Johnson acknowledges this in game saying “it’s a good way to see where we’ve been.” Giving the checkpoint some fun character that may seem totally unnecessary, but I genuinely love the game’s world building because of small stuff like that. It’s so unapologetically fun, but it’s not without its genuinely sad moments involving the side characters, but I don’t want to spoil those because they’re really special. You can also find these story books that explain their backstory, and some of them really give a sense of how brutal hell can be.

The setting leads to some great visuals. Tons of twisted, corrupted looking environments that are pretty linear, but the puzzle solving leads to a lot of creative scenarios where you need to combine traditional third-person aiming and positioning based puzzle solving thanks to the light and dark mechanics. As you travel through hell, you must endure bouts where you are stuck in the literal life-sucking darkness where enemies are invincible. There are plenty of moments, either when solving puzzles or exploring, that the game will force you into an encounter with a horde of demons. You have three weapons to take them out; The Boner, Teether, and the Monocussioner. A pistol, assault rifle, and shotgun respectively. They all get upgrades as you defeat bosses and by endgame, Garcia is one tough hunter.

Boss upgrades aren’t the only thing the player can get. Hell has plenty of gems you can find that contribute to the character progression in a satisfying way. White gems act as currency for the various vendors you’ll find as well as Red gems, which you can use at any time in an upgrade menu. You can increase the stats of your weapon, like fire rate and damage, increase Garcia’s max health, and decrease the charge up time for your Torch. The dichotomy between your main three weapons and the torch isn’t something I expected to work well because the Torch isn’t much of a weapon, more of a tool. But as the game went on, I found the Torch to be immensely helpful with ammo conservation. I’m usually the kind of player that likes things to die in one shot, so I focused my Red Gem upgrades into damage and reload time, this meant I didn’t have much ammo to spare. Luckily, the Torch can one-hit kill most enemies when fully charged, but the real perk is that when you’re in the Torch’s charged attack animation, you have invincibility from literally everything. It makes it useful in large crowds for cutting down numbers and staying safe.

You would think the light and dark mechanics would get old rather fast, but Shadows of the Damned has a comfortable pace. You’re never doing one thing for too long. You’re mostly shooting hoards of demons, obviously, but you’re flipping switches, finding strawberries to open doors (yup), playing a side scrolling shooter, blasting giant cyclops with your Big Boner gun (yup), and so many other fun moments. Shadows of the Damned at its core is a third-person shooter, but the amount of times you’re playing a completely different game is incredibly refreshing. When you’re running through the catacombs, running from door to door in pure darkness, trying to find the switches that open the way to the goat head that will illuminate the room (yup), it’s tense for all the right reasons. I hardly got bored, frustrated, or apathetic.

There’s a lot to talk about with Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. The wild world, the funny writing, the varied and tense gameplay, the rockin’ soundtrack, the silly characters, the serious moments, or the awesome sense of progression, just to name a few enjoyable things. It only took me about 8 hours to finish the game and most of that was in one sitting. I have only played Shadows of the Damned once at PAX East 2024 earlier this year and it was such a great demo, the full game delivered all of that and more. Add in the New Game Plus feature that lets you keep your late game upgrades or the optional gyro aiming, and you have an incredibly arcade-y experience that keeps you laughing and blasting for hours. The game launches on October 31st and I can’t recommend it enough. This is a punk rock gem that everyone can love.

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