“Taste my big boner!,” yells Garcia “Fucking” Hotspur as he shoots a giant demon in the eye with a phallic gun. What I have just described is probably one of the least crazy scenarios in Shadows of the Damned, the latest game from Suda 51 (No More Heroes) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil). There is normally not much to say about a Suda 51 game aside from “this shit is crazy but doesn’t play all that well.” After all, the last game these two guys made together was Killer 7, something that could be called the art house version of a video game (if you were some kind of pretentious ass, like I am).
Meet Garcia and his Boner.
Shadows stars the aforementioned Mr. Hotspur in his quest to free his girlfriend from hell. He is accompanied by his floating skull companion, Johnson, who turns into guns, torches, and motorcycles at Garcia’s command. He also turns into your Boner; the default weapon in the game. The charming and lewd banter that goes back and forth between these two characters gives the game some literal laugh-out-loud moments, and the translation is spot on; don’t be surprised to see references to movies or TV shows that you wouldn’t expect to see in a Japanese video game.
Garcia Slaps a Demon with his Johnson.
Shadows is easily the most video game-y video game under the Suda 51 banner. Here, imagine Resident Evil 4 if it was a Suda game. Got it in your mind console? That’s what this game is. That’s exactly what this game is; the sound effects, camera angles, stage structure, and even the menus are what you think they would be if you are familiar with the previous work of Suda and Mikami. Really, if you were to boil it down to the bare essentials, this is Resident Evil 4, except you can walk and aim, and it has some crazy-ass weapons. You can level up said weapons by collecting red gems, you can buy health items (in the form of alcohol) and ammo with white gems, and bosses drop blue gems which give you a new weapon.
The Big Boner, an Upgrade to the Boner.
The only real flaws of the game are minor: there are a few animation and clipping issues, and the camera can get a little cumbersome at times. The parts of the game that stray from the core shooting also aren’t all that fun. My personal biggest issue, however, is more of a compliment. For all the leveling up you do and considering how goddamn fun the game is to play, I would have loved some “new game +” feature to keep me playing after completion.
DICK JOKES!
It’s a familiar game, to be certain, but that’s not a bad thing in this case. Suda’s appetite for going full crazy often leads to games that aren’t amazingly fun to play, but smack you in the face with so much craziness it compels you to completion. Having a sound, tried and true genre behind his ideas makes for a much more entertaining scenario, one that somehow makes boner jokes work. That, my friends, is an accomplishment.