Games You Should Be Playing

As my first post in a column I'll be calling "Games You Should Be Playing", I've thought long and hard about what should be my first entry. After finally deciding that the game should be one that is a little more current and easily accessible, I've decided that it should be one that, while critically well received, did not have the sales to really support a title of such caliber. I am referring to the one and only...

Shadows of the Damned.

The One and Only

Created by Grasshopper Manufacture, the geniuses behind Killer7, No More Heroes and its sequel, and the upcoming Lollipop Chainsaw (which looks amazing, if I may add), and of course involving Goichi Suda (their CEO and creative brain), this game was basically EA telling Suda to go nuts. Which he did, and created this little gem.

The story of Garcia Hotspur is a wild one, starting with him introducing himself as a demon hunter and catching word that his girlfriend is in danger.  Upon arriving home, surprise! she is kidnapped and taken to the underworld by an ugly demon named Fleming with an even uglier attitude.  Its your job to follow Fleming down into hell to rescue her from his own domain, and to take a ton of demons down in your wake.  

The game features a third person control scheme, and Resident Evil 4 and 5 lovers should feel right at home.  The controls were almost ripped straight from their finished copies and pasted onto Garcia with great effect.  An immediately noticeable and differing factor about this game is that it is crude.  Real crude.  Like junior-high-school-I-just-found-a-new-dick-joke crude.  The game knows its crude, Suda knows its crude, and when you play it, you will find out for yourself just how groan-inducingly crude it is. At first, it seems childish and juvenile, but it grows on you, until you hit a giddy point of realization that it just wouldn't be the same without the dick jokes and the bad references.

Garcia & his demon pal Johnson

Your best friend and fighting companion is named Johnson, a floating flaming skull that acts as your torch, your guide, and your multitude of guns. Your save points are "one-eyed-willies" that become shocked when you approach and poop flaming excrement to mark your save.  Your weapon of choice is the Boner.  The list goes on and on.  Its fantastically kiddy and enjoyable. To top it off, the characters become extremely likable as you progress.  I continued playing long into the night just to see where Garcia and Johnson would end up next and how they would progress one step closer to saving the damsel in distress.

You'll want to aim for the head: the reward is a cinematic show never gets old

Meet George, and his boss battle is unforgettable.

The shooting is tight and the weapons feel great in your hands, even as they get more and more rediculous.  The pacing is spot on, putting you in new and creative situations with every level, and the bosses are a breath of fresh air in a stale genre, even though it does fall back on the "hit the glowing weak spot" trope. The environments are a little dark, but you are in hell, so I guess its explainable.  The demon/zombie creatures could use a little more variation, but this is one of the few blemishes on what should be a best seller.

When you can pick it up for $25 to $30 brand new, its hard for me to tell you to NOT purchase it.  Beneath the juvenile humor and the usual third person perspective lies an action game that not only blazes new trails by introducing a not often visited setting backed up with fantastic characters, but also pays homage to classic video game mechanics that have kept the art alive and well for years.  You are missing out if you don't give this at least a rental.