On a whim earlier — and partly because I’d been pondering the wisdom of attempting to put an actual book together on interesting Japanese games — I fired up my Xbox 360 for the first time in ages and put in a disc that had never yet graced its DVD drive: Shadows of the Damned.

I picked this game up a long time ago back when Game and Gamestation were having their difficulties and were selling off huge amounts of their stock at ridiculously low prices. (Entertainingly, preowned Xbox 360 games now just normally sell for about the same price they did when the company was trying frantically to get everything out the door as quickly as possible.) It was one of many investments for the future — games that I thought looked interesting, but didn’t necessarily want to play right now. I own several games by Goichi “Suda51” Suda, and haven’t played any of them, for exactly this reason.

I didn’t even know a whole lot about Shadows of the Damned. I remember a few people talking about it when it came out — largely about how in-your-face shocking it was — but never knew details. This meant I could go into it pretty much with beginner’s mind, which is always the best way to approach the more interesting games out there, particularly “auteur”-style works such as that produced by Suda.

Anyway, after an introductory sequence in which the protagonist’s girlfriend was hanged, raped by demons that crawled out of her corpse, brought back to life and attached to the Lord of Hell’s dick, who then dragged her into the Underworld promising to continually rape, kill and resurrect her until the end of time, the protagonist leapt into the convenient hell portal and met up with his demonic friend Johnson, who can helpfully turn himself into a motorbike or a gun.

After that initiation, I knew I was in for a bit of a strange ride. What I was pleasantly surprised to discover is that said ride is also a lot of fun — not just for its entertainingly written and wonderfully delivered dialogue, but also for its gameplay. Essentially a third-person shooter somewhat akin to later Resident Evil games, Shadows of the Damned features a number of interesting mechanics which gradually start to overlap and intertwine as you progress. Initially you’ll have to deal with just one kind of obstacle at a time, then two, then several with enemies trying to chew your face off. The opening is paced in such a way as to be challenging, but also to equip you with everything you need to progress further.

One striking thing about the game so far is that it reminded me how long it’s been since I played an honest-to-goodness completely linear game. Shadows of the Damned is split into discrete levels, each with a clear path through them — albeit with a few diversions to find items and suchlike — and it made me realise how much more focused an experience this provides than the open worlds we tend to get confronted with these days. That’s not to say there’s anything particularly wrong with an open world, but sometimes clear corridors and pathways are nice — they certainly keep the pace rolling along at a fair old lick.

I’m only a couple of levels in so far, but I’ve greatly enjoyed what I’ve played; everything about this game seems to work perfectly well together to create an experience that very much makes you sit up and take notice of it. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of it — and I’m suddenly inclined to check out the other Suda games I have on my shelf!