Shellshock just takes itself too seriously...
When I first started playing Shellshock ‘Nam 67, the last thing I was expecting was a cross between Battlefield: Vietnam and Serious Sam. The back of the game essentially says that you’ll experience the atrocities of the Vietnam war up close and personal. As we’ll see, the only atrocity is being forced to play it. You may have already read our Playstation 2 review of the game so I won’t elaborate on details already covered there.
Shellshock puts you into the boots of a cherry soldier at the beginning of the Vietnam War. The storyline weaves in and out of the missions, sometimes not even appearing at all, and isn’t crucial to the enjoyment (or resentment) or the game. The gist of it is that there’s a big-bad Vietnamese General out in the jungle, and you have to track him down and kill him. That is, if you can make your way through the missions without throwing the game away in frustration.
Mission objectives are flashed to you once for five seconds, and then you don’t get any more hints at what you’re supposed to do. If you miss your five seconds of briefing, then too bad for you—you’ll just have to progress by looking at the different colored shapes on the compass. From what I’ve observed, green triangles indicate friendly soldiers but it’s never explained to you what anything else on the compass means. You better know how to read a compass damn well too or else you’ll be stranded by the apparent lack of an overhead map.
The bad game play doesn’t stop at confusing mission objectives either—if you like running and gunning then you just might enjoy Shellshock because that’s the only thing you’ll be doing. Each and every mission involves running somewhere, killing everything in your path, and eventually blowing something up. Be wary on each explosion because the game has a tendency to freeze up on the Xbox, unlike the Playstation 2 version. On three separate occasions I had to restart because the Xbox froze at a crucial mission objective explosion.
Some missions, while doable, are visibly broken as well. You’ll fight your way through dozens of Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars only to see in the distance that your objective, the enemy commander, is already standing with U.S. troops around him in anticipation for the cut scene. Another mission sees you navigating VC tunnels searching for civilians you have to save. One grenade and five dead civvies later, my mission was complete. Apparently when Shellshock says, “rescue” they mean “rescue or kill.”
In another apparent mess up, when the computer AI says, “follow me” it actually means, “follow the human player.” The AI ranks down with the worst that I’ve ever seen in a game. As stated in our Playstation 2 review, the enemy and friendly AI will run, stop, and shoot. You’ll also have to be dodging your own troops as well as they have a tendency to shoot at you every once and a while. Enemies will run in a straight line into your line of fire. Occasionally they’ll seek cover but more often than not you’ll be mowing them down likes blades of grass.
In their quest to bring you closer to Vietnam realness than ever before, Eidos and developer Guerilla apparently forgot to throw in the fact that Americans can die. Your friendly AI soldiers will take a few bullets, hold their leg, and then get right back into the fight. Also, it looks like Superman, or Lt. Miller as he’s called in the game, leads your platoon. Lt. Miller can stand right out in the open and take down wave after wave of incoming enemy soldiers without suffering a scratch. By the time I got sick of watching I counted Lt. Miller at 59 kills in one mission.
Graphically, the Xbox has the same bland graphics as the Playstation 2 version. Mountains will be illuminated in a nice pale gray while you run through the same templates of forest and tunnel over and over again. The game does run at a smooth frame rate but that’s only because the graphics look like something from a last-generation system. You can rotate the camera (you’ll have to because the game starts at the top of the Z-axis looking straight down on you) and most guns have a zoom feature.
The sound department doesn’t fair much better, 70’s-era music will play at the title screen and while you’re in base camp but is surprisingly absent during missions. Sometimes when a gun fires, all sound effects (rain sounds, other gunfire, yelling) will cut out completely for a few seconds. Also, this game will have you believe that North Vietnamese people said only three phrases in very bad English, nothing more. Your friendly AI soldiers aren’t much better spitting out, “ok” every 7 seconds.
Like the Playstation 2 version, there’s no multiplayer but with a game this bad, why would you want it? The single player is broken enough that it frightens me to imagine what Guerilla would push as a multiplayer gaming experience.
Shellshock was marketed as a brutal game that highlighted the atrocities of the Vietnam War. You’ll see men get chopped up and officers putting a bullet right through their own heads—which is exactly what you might want to do after playing this game. If you absolutely must have this game then wait till the price drops to $10. Sure it’s 20% of the original price, but remember that you’re paying for 20% of a game.