Since annoucement of remixer of Damned was made, I've decided to revisit the 2011 release of the game.
Man, I should've punched myself in the face when I made that decision.
Here are some thoughts on that... experience I've had.
Playing k7 and Damned back to back, I've noticed something that I was not aware of before.
I knew that Damned is "RE Clone", and Mikami man worked on both ghm games would make it resemble each other, but oh man, I was not expecting that.
Here is a short list of stuff I've noticed in gameplay only:
>all enemies are smiles (demons if you will)
>yellow vital points changed to headshots (still a one-hit-kill)
>limbs removal, you can shoot out legs, arms, heads
>vision ring swapped for lightshot to make blueberry demons be vulnerable again
>duplicator smiles are swapped with big cracked cave walls
>collateral shot swapped with charged lightshot
>soul shells are now key items (strawberry, eyeball and brain)
>gatekeeper is just a babyface on the door
>garcia swears when you get a headshot (just like smiths)
>cctvs are present in hell (not a gameplay feature in Damned)
>big red vital points on enemies and bosses (but it's common among many other games, it's not exclusive to Mikami man games)
One big difference here is that while k7 doesn't give a shit about you not being able to get what game wants from you (aside from help from remnants), Damned are holding your hand throught the whole game. Camera always shows you next objective, your dickscull always says out loud what is needed to be done. It's a complete joke. Game for 30 yo toddlers.
I have no clue why they backtracked when developing the game to to the idea of just "lets repeat RE gameplay loop, but now you can walk and shoot at the same time!". I think that's Mikami man curse, since he had to make same RE gameplay game for 20 years; Suda how suffers from same curse of having to make every new game a NMH gameplay game. Back to the point, Damned resemble k7 a lot, just with slightly different walking mechanics.
When you're talking about game on itself (not even touching whole Kurayami lore), back in a day, I didn't mind themes, gameplay and everything all that much. But now, when I played it again, I started to really despise all that overuse of blood, depiction of unnecessary violence, gore, sex and explicit language. It's all just seems overly edgy to the point of disgust I'm having now. Maybe I'm getting old (sure thing I am). It's like you can't have a blblical hell without having all that "glorifying gorefest" starter pack. And alcohol as a healing items, teaches kids all the right things. Too bad Garcia doesn't take heroin as a way to get back to life. And what's the meaning behind Garcia having whole body tattoed? Is he from mara salvatrucha or something?
Although I do consider some dick jokes being a smart wordplay here and there. The other thing that threw me off was use of "acts" (chapters) and overall pacing of the game. What's the point of chapters where you can never tell the difference (and I mean aside from obvious difference like 2d-sidescroller and boss fights) between the levels. It's not that game doesn't have a clear distinction of chapters. It doesn't need it at all. But it's a part of Ghost n Ghouls reference, so it's needed to be done to show off the map screen (also pointless addition). When I mentioned pacing, I meant overall frame of going thru the game. As adventure, we surely going somewhere, up the the castle. But when you get you the big boss at the end - it just happens. Like, oh, here is the main bad guy, now fight! I was in middle of something and game is throwing that curveball at you. C'mon.
End level doors are so dumb, why do you need to mash QTE to open a DOOR? And where it takes you? Of course to a loading screen? Can't level just end as is? Do I really need to do pointless actions? The other thing I've missed when I first played Damned, those poster stories. I know about book stories (they're all same shit: sad person sad and commits suicide, no moral here). While posters provide some additional dialogue, which is always nice. Somewhat funny dialogue is like the only redeeming factor about the game. That, and music (another chance for Yamaoka to have fun and travel the world for concerts). Everything else is mediocre and unpleasant. I feel empty and sad after finishing the game. What a depressing shit it is. Some people don't experience enough horror in theirs daily life, so that' why there are such games exists. Isn't the whole point of videogames is to escape from the real world of everyday horror and suffering we endure living in capitalistic society, no?
While being another ghm title, it's not a technical masterpiece by any means, it's playable, but it does have a full pack of bugs and glitches. There are few gamebreaking ones (like in Flemming fight one form never happens, so you need to restart the mission). Once I went thru the door without a promt and dropped into abyss. Johnson clipping thru the wall if you hug it. Objects not loading properly. Blue gems for guns upgraded never match up with Johnson UI and in-game model (Garcia puts gem into skull and on upgrade pop-up screen it appears in wrong spot). No autoshoot when you keep fire button pressed after reloading (I doubt it's a bug, but could'be an improvement). Subtitles were never single-checked via Microsoft Word, bunch of typos, additional spaces, lacking punctiation, and no subs on Johnson rap in the end. And of course "underpowered by Unreal Engine" 10 second texture loading after game loading complete. I doubt any of these issues would be fixed in upcoming remixer, although these QoL updates would make gameplay a much more pleasant experince (not that game worth playing at all at this point). I mean, they can't make it worse than NMH1&2 for PC, right? /sob2 Can't they?
not to mention all the gore