Joystiq Top 10 of 2011: Shadows of the Damned
This sojourn in hell inspires the most intense evangelism, and that makes me think that nobody in EA's marketing department bothered to play Shadows of the Damned.
Even those who acted as envoys for the game's off-kilter charms, those people who were unpaid but still rewarded, might have gotten stuck on the easy marquee description: "It's the unfathomable oddness of Suda 51, paired with Shinji Mikami sensibility and an Akira Yamaoka soundtrack!"
The summation is accurate (if a bit unfair to the major input from design lead Massimo Guarini, who left Grasshopper Manufacture in 2011), but hardly a detailed message for those unfamiliar with star Japanese designers. At least Shadows of the Damned had no troubles conveying its obvious qualities: a surprising and properly grotesque vision of post-life limbo, a protagonist passionate to a fault and a hilarious skull-on-a-stick to guide him.
Even those who acted as envoys for the game's off-kilter charms, those people who were unpaid but still rewarded, might have gotten stuck on the easy marquee description: "It's the unfathomable oddness of Suda 51, paired with Shinji Mikami sensibility and an Akira Yamaoka soundtrack!"
The summation is accurate (if a bit unfair to the major input from design lead Massimo Guarini, who left Grasshopper Manufacture in 2011), but hardly a detailed message for those unfamiliar with star Japanese designers. At least Shadows of the Damned had no troubles conveying its obvious qualities: a surprising and properly grotesque vision of post-life limbo, a protagonist passionate to a fault and a hilarious skull-on-a-stick to guide him.
