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2.5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SHELLSHOCK 2: BLOOD TRAILS Posted by Alec Hilton on Feb 18, 2009 15:38 (Feb 18, 2009 15:38) |
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When a game comes with a complete media blackout, especially when the blackout continues all the way up to and past launch, it really makes you wonder what is wrong with the game. Fortunately with Shellshock 2 it was actually a good thing that there wasn’t much media coverage out there as it has no doubt saved the public from what a terrible experience playing it really is.
With most FPS’ as long as the setting is good enough things just trundle along and can be enjoyed on surface value.. The original Shellshock’s setting of Vietnam was a nice change from the trend of WWII games that were around at the time. The sequel takes us back to ‘Nam but loses all of the reality that the original had. You take the role of a US GI that is dropped into ‘Nam for a reason that isn’t really explained other than the obvious. The only plot point that seems to make any sense is that your character is in search of his brother again, although why that is isn’t really explained, nor is the fact that his squad seems to be Zombies.
 For all intents and purposes, Rebellion seems to have seen the brilliant Zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War and thought that it was a great idea and thus shoehorned this into their game. Which is a shame as it might have been interesting to return to Vietnam in the glory that both the 360 and PS3 could paint it in. Regrettably it looks like Rebellion designed this game on a PS2 dev kit and then ported it over to the now current-gen consoles. The vistas that you are faced with are quite unremarkable, the textures are dull and indistinct, with a colour palette that looks like they couldn’t afford brighter colours so decided to overuse the duller ranges in a very strange attempt to disguise the fact.
The character models are actually slightly better only in the way that they have colour on them, but even that is done in a peculiar way by almost every character that you encounter being covered in blood of some description, so some look like they have bathed in it while others look like they have had a blood paintball match.
The AI isn’t much of an improvement on the scenery, as initially you tackle soldiers who seem to not only to appear at some obvious spawn points but also jump into your sights with annoying frequency. There are odd times that the soldiers spawn in at random points and can be invisible in trees or undergrowth. This is almost infuriating by the fact that if this does happen the enemy has one of the surest shots I have come across, hitting you with every bullet without fail. The funnier action comes when you start taking on Zombies as they just seem to run into your iron sights without fail each time.
 The only thing that makes the gameplay hard is the slowness of the sensitivity, so bringing your weapon to bare no matter what it is, is amazingly slow and terribly inaccurate. If you are attacked from the side you will almost be dead before you have moved around enough to be able to kill your opponent.
Shellshock 2 is up there alongside Turning Point as the worst FPS’ of this century. The idea was a strong one but the direction they took with it was poorly laid out. Continuing the Shellshock series could have been a great move considering that CoD has dropped back to the WWII roots much to people’s disappointment. So having a shooter set in ‘Nam if done well like CoD would have made a great game. Unfortunately there is no-one that I can recommend this game to, if you’re really in need of a FPS fix then I would still say beware.
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