“Kusoge” (ku – soh – gay) is a Japanese term, deriving from the terms “kuso” (meaning “crap”) and “geemu” (meaning “game”). In other words, a crap game. In broader context, though, the term has been used with both revulsion and endearment, labeling licensed Famicom garbage such as Takeshi’s Challenge – which was reportedly designed while the famous comedian on which the game was based happened to be fully inebriated – to more modern titles that, for all their faults, manage to find followings in spite of them. In other words, something that’s “so bad, it’s good” – the game equivalent of the B-movie.
In this console generation, the label has been tossed around a few times for games such as the original Earth Defense Force 2017, Oneechanbara, and Bullet Witch. A title that was released much more recently (and reviewed by GrE, in fact) that has certainly joined the ranks of kusoge is Grasshopper Manufacture’s Shadows of the Damned.
Yes, I realize the game’s production values are decent and the controls are perfectly adequate 90% of the time. Whether the game is “good” or not isn’t really in question here. This game’s status as a kusoge comes down to one factor: its content. Any game where the main character is standing on top of a skyscraper in a red light district shooting demons that look like BioShock‘s Big Daddies with a huge phallic rifle while screaming out “HERE’S MY BIG BONER!!!” (which happens to be the name of said phallic rifle) is going to have a difficult time convincing me that it wasn’t designed as a kusoge. I’ve also ran into a few bugs that have forced a game reload, including a door opening glitch where a QTE prompt for opening a door appeared when Garcia wasn’t close enough to the door to perform the action. This caused the him to perform the “kick down the door” animation without being close enough to actually kick down the door. The QTE button prompt never appeared after that, which locked Garcia and Johnson out of obtaining an ever-important strawberry that was required to progress further in the level. Don’t even get me started on the chase mini-game in the forest level and side-scrolling shmup segments midway through the game. Shadows of the Damned knows exactly what it is – a kusoge – and completely revels in it.
That said, Shadows of the Damned is also a perfectly adequate third-person shooter that absolutely oozes (sometimes literally) with character. In fact, I’m having a hard time putting the damn thing down because I can’t wait to see what Suda Goichi and Shinji Mikami are going to throw at me next. More than anything else, Shadows of the Damned shows what Suda Goichi is capable of achieving when backed by a proper development budget. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for EA’s marketing budget for the game. Shadows of the Damned snuck into retail with little more than a whisper, even amongst the hardcore, dooming it to abysmal sales and a one way trip to Bargain Bin purgatory.
I believe the reason for this centers around the game’s ample supply of vulgar and offensive content. I’m not a prude by any means of the word, but there were parts of the game, including the Big-Boner-Big-Daddy mini-game I discussed above, during which I didn’t want anyone coming into my house to hear what I was playing if they didn’t know what was going on. How some parts of this game’s design got past the marketing and image gurus at EA is absolutely beyond me, and I wonder if the lack of marketing is simply a means of keeping the game from being featured as a headline story on FOX News. Though I can’t help but wonder if even that would have been more of a boon to the game’s sales than a bust.
Shadows of the Damned is so crazy, so controversial, and so over-the-top that it is one kusoge experience that should not be missed. Unfortunately, the game’s poor sales in the West will guarantee a loss for Grasshopper Manufacture and EA and could cause the former to consider following its peers into the happy ample-profit world of PSP Japan-only development. I doubt it will happen, but it’s a disturbing thought.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
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