I finished playing Shadows of the Damned, and I'm not going to spoil it for you, so relax, let's just sit down together and have a conversation about cock, and how the game might be deeper than you think. Together we will deeply penetrate the shadowy recesses of the game. Also, (more sexual innuendo about anal sex).
Now that we got that out of our systems let's get down to brass tacks. The game is set in the tone of Day of the Dead or From Dusk Til Dawn. The protagonist is Garcia Hotspur and his shapeshifting ex-demon, Johnson. Garcia's girlfriend is kidnapped and killed over and over again by the Demon Lord Flemming and his minions. There are many, MANY, penis jokes, MANY! but I believe the game is not about Garcia's search for his love, but instead his relationship with his wang.
First, Paula, the woman he professes to love, is mostly a stranger, we know nothing about her except what she looks like, the first we see of her is when she is hanging in a noose above his bed- her thong is much in evidence. She dies at least three times in the opening, demons crawling out of her flesh (like a baby from a vagina), this will happen often in the game, we see her and then a new demon crawls out of her, because, according to Flemming, all demons want to be in a nice piece of ass. Her dialogue in the game is mostly a screaming of Garcia's name (much like one might do during sex), and inquiries on why he isn't saving her (men are selfish in their desire) and why he keeps letting demons kill her. Eventually we find out little bits about her, like that Garcia found her in a dumpster and took her home. So, basically she's trash someone else threw out (or she lives there?) and since she was discarded Garcia just takes her home and she says nothing to him for months (or was she talking and he not listening). Garcia often claims to love her, but obviously knows nothing about her, and it isn't even clear she likes or wants him. She is almost always in negligee that Hotspur says he picked out for her. So, woman as fantasy object and not person, so much so that she came across to me as beard. She is supposed to be what he desires, but he obviously has no idea what real women are or of any sort of complexity of emotion. This is not a game about love or any kind of intimate relationship. There is nothing real about Paula, and Garcia tries way too hard to convince us he cares about her and how sexy he finds her. You may be thinking now that this is just a cheesy horror/adventure game, and what should one expect from this; it's cheap, vapid, and schmaltzy, but there is a complex relationship explored in this game and it is between Garcia Hotspur and his penis.
So, Paula is not Hotspur’s focus it is Garcia's constant companion and guide, the ex-demon Johnson, if you don't get the penis reference in Johnson it's OK, there are more. Johnson takes many forms, a torch to light the way, various guns, the boner, the big boner, the skullblaster. Guns as phallic symbols are obvious, their shape, a symbol of power, the explosions they make, and Hotspur's gun is named after an erection, they are beating off that metaphor to death. Garcia is Mexican, and the hell he travels through starts as a Mexican town, but Johnson speaks with a British accent- his desire is both part of him and alien. Johnson is always able to meet his need and fit the situation, apparently telepathically since Garcia doesn't tell it what to do, but Johnson also has a mind of his own, and also has his own desires when in one portion he gets demon phone sex and grows much larger (the big boner) and has his own ejaculation scene, Garcia is shown holding the gun in such a way it appears as a five foot, metallic, phallus. As stated earlier, Garcia is guided through the hells by Johnson, who also lights the way. The whole story seems to be a metaphor of Garcia controlled by his desire and desire for release. He does not really know why he does what he does, where he is going, or why Paula was kidnapped, the situations move from a realistic town, to dungeon, to garden, to swamp, to (ahem) tower; the levels follow no reason and are sometimes juxtaposed in terms of opposites- they are all different metaphors for sex (taken in the above order would be pleasure/pain, utopia/natural/beautiful, beautiful/wet/treacherous, phallus). A few levels are dreamlike paper cut-outs of Hotspur and demons, during which Hotspur flies across the level, further demonstrating the (sexual) fantasy atmosphere of the worlds. He is called to these levels by a opera singing demon woman who only sings and dances, again a symbol of desire without any humanity, she has no identity beyond her appearance and has nothing to say for herself. She also leads him into greater and greater levels of danger, as desire can do.
This all seems to be in his head. He pretends to be chasing Paula, who appears, dies, disappears, runs, disappears again, but often exists in the background dying again as Garcia ignores her and shoots demons with his boner. His desire is focused on what is in front of it. Johnson goes from confident to afraid to sarcastic, and himself not always clear on what is happening or why they are progressing- desire only aware of itself and its need always pressing forward. Garcia is trapped in this world where he is powerful and powerless- Paula keeps dying in front of him and revealing herself as a pretty costume for demons to wear and Hotspur falls for it each time.
Hotspur is driven by his desire, but doesn't understand it. He is led through his sexual fantasy levels by his boner, but even these levels are murky, the demons he is ejaculating hot death into are sexless and naked, most often with male frames, sometimes with female frames and missing their abdomens (read women as sex objects the procreating part missing- the uterus where the baby would gestate). The levels themselves are sexual fantasy with a frightening veneer which, like everything else in the game, obscures the sexual part. Darkness is Garcia's unbeatable foe, and his boner lights the way. Garcia can not define himself or his world without his cock as reference. Paula, his "girlfriend," is only sex object, and a very stylized one at that, she is the model of a perfect woman, innocent-looking and slutty, helpless and dangerous, simple and mysterious, silent and blank, she is relegated to calling out Garcia's name (as one would during sex) and wondering why he can do nothing to save her and why he lets her keep on dying. So what is dying? Is it the woman Hotspur has no way of relating to outside of sex? is it Hotspur's desire which ends with each climax? Is it the fact that Garcia is not into women at all, but feels obligated to be the macho lady killer with the most ladiest lady? Add to this that she is unattainable and belongs to another, the Lord of Demons, and one is left to wonder, does Hotspur only want her because he can't have her, because she is impossible, and therefore he has no obligation to fulfill her in any way which is impossible for him either because he is gay or is lost in his own cage of penises.
All in all it is an interesting view of men. Garcia is the very picture of masculinity, handsome, powerful, sexual, well-muscled, very tattoo'd; he seems to be the cypher of all men. He is governed and confused by his penis. He is unable to see past it or even recognize it's power over him. He is pushed onward by his desire which he labels purpose (to save the girl, defeat demons, be good), but is all of his own making, it is all his perception as mutated by his desire. He can not even see it to question it. He can never find resolution, because his desire might slacken but never be sated, so more demons, different demons are created to give him purpose, but all of it is just a paper world masking the emptiness and chaos of his own existence. The only way he can make sense of the world and give it meaning is through his desire, which even he does not understand.
Is this what we are, puppets of desire, directionless, pointless, using our need, the one thing we can feel to rationalize purpose? Are we as flat as Garcia Hotspur? Hmmm. What do you think?
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