Shadows of the Damned, the unexpected collaboration between No More Heroes, Killer7 and Lollipop Chainsaw creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, will finally see a PC release with a new remake later this year – over a decade after it first hit consoles.
Written by Suda51 and produced by Mikami, Shadows of the Damned arrived in 2011 as a typically offbeat third-person shooter from Suda’s studio Grasshopper Manufacture, putting players in the boots of “Garcia Fucking Hotspur” as the demon-slayer blasted his way through a Hellish demon realm to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend Paula.
Helping Garcia was Johnson, his demon pal who could transform into a full armoury of guns, a flashlight – used to weaken darkness-dwelling demons, Alan Wake-style – and a literal motorcycle amidst lines like “Taste my Big Boner!” and “Aim for the cracks and shoot it with your hot Boner.” (The Boner being Garcia’s revolver, obviously.)
![Garcia Hotspur aims his gun, the shapeshifting demon Johnson, at a monster in Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/shadows-of-the-damned-hella-remastered-aiming.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
As you can probably grasp from that if you haven’t played it, it’s a very silly affair, soaked in Suda’s trademark love of rock music and punk stylings as seen in the likes of No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw (which is also due a return). Mikami’s influence comes through the game’s solid survival–horror-tinged shooting and genuinely demonic monster designs, despite the goofy approach. I remember liking it a good amount at the time, despite never really gelling with No More Heroes, though I was also a literal teenager at the time, so I can’t speak to how its crass tone might land today.
The original Shadows of the Damned never went further than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, potentially one reason behind reportedly small sales despite a generally warm consensus about its engaging gameplay and charmingly rompy road-movie feel. This year’s remaster – the title of which will probably tell you whether you’ll get along with it, as it’s called Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered – will inspire a proper PC release for the first time, landing on Steam later in 2024.