Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered Review

Hella Ported

HIGH Shadows of the Damned is still one wild trip well worth experiencing.

LOW Realizing it’s not a remaster.

WTF The first noticeable slowdown on my PS5 Pro was from this thirteen-year old title.

For those who don’t remember, Shadows of the Damned was a bit of a supergroup project.

It was developed by Suda 51’s Grasshopper Manufacturing, and while Suda wrote the script, he didn’t produce. Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame (having just left Platinum Games) tagged along as a producer, and they looped in Akira Yamaoka of Silent Hill to do the music. All of this was orchestrated and funded by Electronic Arts of all companies, who I’m sure were absolutely thrilled with the incredibly weird, dick-joke-filled spectacle the team turned in. Luckily, our man Suda was able to get the rights from his former EA overlords and repackaged his surreal classic in the form of the newly-released Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered.

Gamecritics has covered this game twice now, so anybody looking for a traditional recap of the games themselves would do well to check out our reviews.

In summary, Shadows of the Damned is an absolutely insane experience full of memorable moments, sexual innuendo, surreal imagery, shockingly endearing characters, and great music. It’s also a rather basic third-person shooter akin to one of the many Resident Evil 4 clones from that time period, but everything else about it is so wildly original that the moment-to-moment combat is more than enough to get players to the next preposterous set piece.

This is the point where my review veers negative, but make no mistake — I think people should absolutely pick up Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. It’s a rollicking good time, and I’m sure that fans of Suda 51’s work in particular have already played it, and they should look forward to doing so again. The main character is named Garcia Hotspur, he has a gun called The Boner that Garcia talks to throughout the game like some weird buddy-cop movie, and occasionally The Boner transforms into The Big Boner. What more does one need to know? Go play Shadows of the Damned.

The core issue at hand is, despite being labeled as such, this is not a remaster. A “remaster” implies work was done to (at the very least) clean up the visuals and prepare the content for modern consumers. This? This is not a remaster — it’s a straight port. The folks in charge took an Unreal Engine 3 game, ported it up to UE5, left everything completely untouched, set it to run at 4K and 60FPS, and left it at that. Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is most certainly not hella remastered.

According to Urban Dictionary, “hella” is commonly used in place of “very” or “really” to imply an emphasis on the discussion point. Remastering the game to the level of “Hella” could’ve implied many things including touching up the character models, putting some work into the shadow effects, maybe tweaking the combat to give it some extra punch, and then ensuring it’s PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced at launch with 120FPS support. That would’ve been hella sweet, bro.

Unfortunately, we got the absolute bare minimum effort from the team, but it could’ve been worse. Lollipop Chainsaw (another Suda 51 gem from that era) also got a recent remaster, and that one did attempt to modernize the look of that title — to truly horrific results. They also had to remove the licensed soundtrack from the original release, which we thankfully don’t have to worry about here.

While Hella Remastered is at least functional, somehow this thirteen-year-old title has some rather serious performance issues. It should be noted that I played and reviewed this title on my PlayStation 5 Pro, which theoretically improves performance on all games even if they’re not specifically patched to be Pro Enhanced. With that said, Remasteres features a mechanic where enemies will drape the world in shadow to become impervious to attacks. This causes the screen to turn blue and displays some extra effects, and whenever this happens (which is quite often) the framerate really starts to chug. It gets down to under 40 FPS and outside of the range of VRR, so it’s very noticeable when it happens.

This wouldn’t be as confounding if it wasn’t for the superior PS4 conversion, which somehow does not have this slowdown problem. That’s right — For PS5 owners of this title, it’s actually better to run the previous generation version to eliminate slowdown. The native PS4 version runs at a slightly lower resolution and has longer load times, but it is the more stable option. This strange scenario is certainly better than playing the original title in 720p at an erratic 30FPS on a 360 or a PS3, but given the power of the hardware being used to play it, these imperfections should’ve been ironed out. The PS5 version being actively worse than the PS4 version is something that I can’t believe exists in 2024, and something that was actually “hella remastered” would not let this happen.

The nicest thing I can say about this product is that Shadows of the Damned still kicks ass, and it’s an inherently good thing that people can play it on modern hardware thirteen years after its original release. This is a functional port that is certainly an improvement over the original iteration, but it’s also one of the more bare bones ports in recent memory, and calling it a “remaster” is a significant stretch in logic. Part of me is disappointed that more hasn’t been done to make this title shine, but the other part of me says Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is still a win merely because it exists.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was originally developed by Grasshopper Manufacturing, remastered by Grasshopper Manufacturing, and published by Netease. The game is currently available on Switch, PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X, and was reviewed on a Playstation 5 Pro. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was not completed, but the reviewer has completed the game prior to this release. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood & Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Themes, and Strong Language. Shadows of the Damned is a thoroughly atrocious choice for concerned parents. Every single double entendre one could possibly imagine around human sexual organs is said, it is extremely violent, the script is extremely vulgar, the main character drinks booze for health, and there are strong themes of demons, the underworld, and the occult — parents particularly sensitive to that sort of thing for faith based reasons should also steer far clear. Do not buy this game for your children!

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes. The game has not been enhanced in any way for modern consumers and lacks any modern accessibility features.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be resized. The subtitles were legible on my setup but cannot be further enhanced. There are no necessary audio cues, and all important information is visually represented on screen. I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable, but the aiming can be inverted. Players control the main character with the left analog stick, control the camera with the right, aim with L2, shoot with R2, reload with the Square button, and access items with buttons on the D-pad.

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Jarrod Johnston

Jarrod has been lucky enough to be a contributor to GameCritics since 2016. In his earlier years, he flamed out of games writing after the freelance checks for $80 weren't cutting the mustard, and he appreciates being able to do his thing at a place like this in its purest form.

He is currently attending graduate school at Pacific University seeking a Master's In Teaching with a focus on secondary social studies. From 2015-2020, Jarrod worked as a school teacher in various countries throughout Asia, and is now seeking certification to teach in his home country so a global pandemic doesn't leave him stranded again.

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