For a game created by two of Japanese development's biggest stars – Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame, and Suda51, who created Killer 7 and No More Heroes – Shadows of the Damned seems to have limped into the shops with a surprising lack of fanfare. This is even more curious when you consider that it's their first collaboration, and the first game either has made to be published by Electronic Arts. Maybe the powers that be were worried that, given its makers' track records, it would be too weird for the general public to handle. And sure enough, Shadows of the Damned is as weird as hell, and every bit as twisted as the average horror movie fan could desire.

You play Garcia Hotspur, a demon-hunter whose girlfriend, Paula, has been kidnapped and dragged down to the underworld by Fleming, a leather-coated demon king with several sets of red eyes. Your mission is simple: to work your way through the underworld, killing all the demons you encounter, before entering Fleming's castle, kicking his ass and getting Paula back. A simple plan that suggests, quite accurately, that Hotspur isn't exactly concerned by the niceties of existentialism and the like.

Indeed, his lack of political correctness proves to be at a similar level to that of Duke Nukem, and he has a more-than-willing accomplice in the form of Johnson, an English-accented ex-demon who works as a torch in Hotspur's right hand and who transforms into a weapon whenever Hotspur aims. Johnson is absolutely key to the game: he has three forms, in their base-states known as the Boner, the Teether and the Monocussioner. These are a semi-automatic pistol, a machine-gun and a shotgun that shoots explosive skulls, respectively.

Gameplay-wise, Mikami has clearly taken the lead, as Shadows of the Damned feels a lot like Resident Evil, although in this instance, you can still move around when you're aiming – the ability to roll out of the way of incoming attacks is a key mechanic. One of the game's fun aspects is trying to work out which elements were devised by Mikami and which by Suda51. One key mechanic feels like it was jointly conceived: at times, the demons will generate a black, oily darkness that constantly drains Hotspur's health – luckily, he has an alternate light-shot which he can aim at goats-head lamps to drive away the darkness, or barrels of pressurised light that rip apart nearby demons like bombs. At times, there are no goats-head lamps around, so Hotspur has to use Johnson as a torch for lighting firework-launchers instead, giving him only a temporary reprieve from the threat posed by the darkness.

There are various ways in which the darkness provides puzzle-solving opportunities, as well as plenty of other, more conventional puzzles. And there are periods when the gameplay veers around wildly – the 2D loading screens, at various points, morph into a 2D side-scrolling shooter (which, cleverly, retains the darkness/light mechanic) and plenty of boss-battles that Resident Evil fans will find reassuringly familiar. But perhaps the best aspect of the game is the way it restricts itself to just three weapons, which you can regularly upgrade so that they acquire outrageous powers. The Boner, for example, can be turned into the Big Boner when Johnson is connected to a phone-sex line, becoming a huge object Hotspur can barely aim, but which makes sense given that he is standing on top of a building and using it to take out 50-foot-tall demons. The Teether develops an auto-aim, and the Monocussioner eventually lets you load four skulls that combine into a rolling bomb, which lets you essentially treat demons as bowling pins (and is crucial in the later boss-battles).

Shadows of the Damned, then, manages to feel both familiar (if you are a fan of Resident Evil, you'll love it) and unlike anything you've ever played before, in terms of the bizarre world it takes place in, which seems to make a worrying amount of sense. It's true that, at times, it feels a bit disjointed, the dialogue is occasionally annoyingly clunky and given that it has no online element, you could argue that it's hopelessly old-fashioned. But if you like the sort of gameplay that Resident Evil offers, it will bring you a lot of enjoyment, more or less from start to finish.