Shellshock: Nam ’67 for the Playstation 2 and Xbox was a title that made its debut almost simultaneously alongside other Vietnam War era titles like Conflict: Vietnam and Vietcong: Purple Haze. However, with the notable exception of Battlefield: Vietnam, almost all the Vietnam War games weren’t all that great and Shellshock wasn’t any real exception. Still, it had its moments and was, at the very least, playable.
It’s been almost five years since gamers had the opportunity to enter the bloody, booby trap infested jungles of Southeast Asia, and the prospect of a sequel to Shellshock running on next-generation hardware was admittedly pretty appealing. After all, we have seen practically every other war featured on the new consoles in glorious HD; it was about time that Vietnam got some attention again. However, perhaps it is this glimmer of hope and anticipation that makes Shellshock 2: Blood Trails that much more disappointing.
Shellshock 2: Blood Trails is a bad game. No, I will go as far as to say it is a horrible game; perhaps one of the worst I have played since Soldier of Fortune: Payback ruined the Soldier of Fortune series for me.
I suppose the first department where Shellshock 2 goes wrong is in its story. The original Shellshock had you playing as an American GI in Vietnam who eventually ends up working with Special Forces behind enemy lines. In the sequel, you also play as an American GI. Only this time you end up in the middle of nowhere, searching for your brother who has been infected with the same super secret, experimental virus that is turning its test subjects into rabid zombies.
Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.
The developers decided to take a franchise based on a realistic recreation of the Vietnam War and added zombies. While radically changing the game’s premise may seem like an absurd idea, admittedly games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein have melded the supernatural with quasi-military realism successfully. All could be forgiven, perhaps, if Shellshock 2’s story was interesting, but it’s like a bad B-grade movie complete with retarded characters and predictable plot turns.
The game play also has also changed, departing from its third person roots to venture into the realms of the first-person shooter genre. Unfortunately, this change does not work in Shellshock 2’s favor either. Everything about the game play is either painfully generic or so incompetently executed that playing through the game is becomes an exercise in endurance.
The levels are incredibly linear and force you to battle your way through waves of spawning enemies and scripted events. Armed with a handgun and a rifle, you wade your way from objective to objective, shooting enemies until the game determines you can continue on your way. That’s pretty much it. Shellshock 2 does try to mix things up by throwing waves of zombies your way near the end of the game, but far from being genuinely frightening, they are just about as interesting as any of the other bland enemies you gun down. It gets old quickly.
The developer’s effort to make Shellshock 2 a hybrid of the shooter and horror genre is evident. It tries to entertain a menacing, disturbing sort of atmosphere that will keep gamers on the edge of their seats, but unlike other games which use horror effectively like F.E.A.R or Condemned, it really doesn’t work here. Shellshock 2 does have a few genuinely creepy moments like when a soldier silences a wounded comrade by slitting his throat, but in ultimately the horror aspect amounts to little more than window dressing, a handful of cheap thrills and eerie, scripted events.
The controls are so terrible that it makes you realize that gamers have been taking the fluidity and precision offered by games like Call of Duty 4 for granted all this time. No matter how you adjust the control’s sensitivity, there is a noticeable lag whenever you try to aim, making shooting with any degree of accuracy next to impossible. You do have the option of using your weapon’s iron sights for increased precision, but again, using them becomes difficult when the controls rarely respond when you want them to.
And then there is the issue of AI. Your team mates are useless. They stand around and do nothing. The enemy AI is just as bad. Sometimes they spawn in the open, sometimes they spawn behind cover. When you get too close, then they’ll charge at you every time, allowing you to easily shoot them in the face. The only reason why you will find yourself dying in this game is because they spawn in the most obscure locations, often times right behind you regardless if you just finished kill everyone there. They also have perfect accuracy. The combination is a frustrating one. It is not uncommon at all to find yourself being shot to death and never knowing where it’s coming from.
And then there are the quick time events. If there’s one thing I can not stand about video games, it is quick time events. Shellshock 2 has them in spades, Every now and then something will happen and you will need to quickly jam on a series of buttons in order to survive. The quick time events are, as usual, entirely superfluous and annoying.
Fortunately, you won’t have to suffer through Shellshock 2 for very long. It clocks in at a brief six to eight hours and has no multiplayer.
The graphics in Shellshock 2 are a clear representation of the limited budget that the developers probably had to work with. The graphics look absolutely awful. Textures are bland, the guns you use are equally unattractive, and the character models are incredibly redundant. Shellshock 2 does have some gruesome gore when you shoot enemies in the face, but it is largely overshadowed by all the other lackluster effects that plague the game’s presentation. For instance, when you throw a grenade, the subsequent detonation looks more like a smoke bomb than an actual explosion.
Shellshock 2’s voice acting is decent. You have a cast of meat-head grunts, Vietcong, and R. Lee Emery sound-a-likes, and while none of them particularly stand out, they do manage to get the job done. The other sound effects, however, are unimpressive. Gun fire sounds more like pop guns than real firearms, and quite a few sound effects are blatantly recycled. For example, while walking through a zombie infested mansion, you will hear the same exact zombie moan. Over and over and over and over.
Shellshock 2 is like a low-budget direct-to-DVD sequel to a Hollywood film. It may have had a promising beginning, but something went horribly wrong along the way. There is so much lacking in Shellshock 2’s presentation and gameplay that it’s hard to believe that someone thought publishing this game was actually a good idea. It is a glaringly generic game that is derivative and inferior to first person shooters that came out years ago. It looks terrible, it sounds awful, and the brief six hours of game play that it does offer are incredibly straight forward and tedious.
Maybe if this game came out five years ago when no other noteworthy game was coming out Shellshock 2 might be worth a rental. But with heavy hitters like Killzone 2 coming out soon, even at its budget price there is absolutely no reason to waste your time or money on this garbage.
Verdict: Pass it
Final Score: 3/10
Mark Fujii: I'm your typical college student who plays too much video games. I also work as an electronic sales associate, meaning I sell Ipods and violent video games to your children when not trying to sneak off and play Super Smash Bros while the boss isn't looking. Oh, and I'm totally awesome. True fact.
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Mark Fujii
I'm your typical college student who plays too much video games. I also work as an electronic sales associate, meaning I sell Ipods and violent video games to your children when not trying to sneak off and play Super Smash Bros while the boss isn't looking. Oh, and I'm totally awesome. True fact.
Brandon (Brandon) says:
(Posted February 24th, 2009 at 6:18 pm)
I think that a 3/10 is a little too generous