ShellShock: Nam '67 - Review

Added October 19th, 2004 by Dakota Grabowski

Introduction:

When Eidos delivered ShellShock: Nam ’67, I was under suspicion that this would be just another shooter that tries to capitalize on the Vietnam War and the conflict. ShellShock thrives on hyping itself around the fact that it’s more realistic than any other game on the Vietnam War. If it’s about Vietnam, it better be real as the horror stories that are often told by the soldiers that went through this war. It essentially is one of the most controversial wars the United States entered itself in. ShellShock hopes to capitalize on the realism and tries to provide the players a view of war that no one has seen yet.

Here’s a short history lesson for those who weren’t even born when the Vietnam War became real. The war began after the Geneva Conference when it divided Vietnam at 17° N lat. into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). It escaladed of course when the United States entered itself and became involved with helping out South Vietnam. So it’s predictable that in Shellshock you’ll be taking control of the United States soldiers to aid South Vietnam during this long and enduring war.

Gameplay:

The game starts you out picking one of three selectable characters and then they quickly enter you into the dramatic war in Vietnam. You will instantly be placed where the Vietcong are pouring out in numbers to take out you and your squad. Rapidly you’ll be taking down the Vietcong while advancing through the first stage as the first stage is actually the best level in the game. You won’t have the same experience of being overwhelmed and fighting intelligent AI throughout the entire rest of the game, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The Vietcong could be exact replicas of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. One moment you’ll think that they know your next move before you do, while in most cases they are just plain stupid. The trick that Guerilla Games uses is that they are trying to outnumber you to make up for their half-witted enemies. You’ll have several members of the opposition shooting at you to make you feel like they are bringing the heat over and over again. The truth to this matter is that there is a large amount of Vietcong trying to bring you down to make up for their AI that lacks the intellect.

If you want a tip how to easily perfect their AI, all you have to do is pass a spawn point safely and those enemies won’t matter anymore. Other methods you could use is just to sit back and let your squad just take care of the opposition for enough time to make it to the spawn point safely. Your health will regenerate over time so if you wanted to, you could go Rambo style and kill a dozen or more Vietcong soldiers. With this way, you have more fun increasing the body count but then you’ll of course have to take a rest for a little bit to let that health regenerate.

One aspect that may attribute to if this game is for you or not, is that the game has horrible stealth missions. Stealth missions are in essence just missions you are forced to go solo and actually become Rambo but without a crew of soldiers to tank for you and take all the hits. Technically they are easy to run through and complete so nothing special with their ‘stealth missions’.
Graphics:

ShellShock falls far short of the Xbox standards for graphics. ShellShock even looks bad when compared to the new PS2 games and that’s not good when looking to buy an Xbox game. Low-polygon counts contribute to models of characters that are horrible and if this would have been corrected, this may have been an acceptable game when comparing graphics to others in this genre.

What they have done well is blood but blood is used well in many other games so it’s almost a criterion for any action game. If there is any saving grace for the ShellShock with graphics it would have to be its environments. Running through the forests can be beautiful at times. Though the environments may not be identical to what Vietnam actually looks like.

Audio:

If ShellShock may have failed in the graphics department, then audio has to be better right? Well you're half-way right as the audio is complementary to what Shellshock may only have to offer. Eidos has done a super job on the voice acting but why couldn’t they have done more work on the Vietcong voices? The Vietcong voices bring down the entire voice acting but I am glad I could eliminate their chance of talking with killing them so easily. Dialogue for Vietcong become repetitious and you will be annoyed beyond the first few levels. Though their horrible voices makes it feel so much better when you finally do kill a few dozen Vietcong.

Soundtrack wise, it’s what I expected as it portrays the sixties nicely. It never goes beyond the standards to showcase any originality. You could find this with many of the war movies that have been released in the past so it wasn’t anything too spectacular. Plus you’ll be hearing the music over and over again as it proves to be a short soundtrack and the music just shows its repetitiveness shortly after the first few levels.

Controls:

ShellShock’s gameplay has issues to work on, but perhaps a good place to start should have been the controls. Right off the bat, the setup didn’t feel natural, and by the time I had completed the game, they still felt awkward. Basically they tried to implement the “Halo controls” which are the standards for FPS these days. ShellShock though isn’t a FPS and it shows as you often find yourself frustrated when you die on accident due to the sloppy controls. The basic controls are:

Left thumbstick – move character
Right thumbstick – look/zoom
Left trigger – sprint/run
Right trigger - use weapon equipped
A button - use item
B button - reload weapon
X button – quick switching of weapons
Y button - crouch
White button – inventory
Black button - prone
Start button - pause
Back button – menu/options
Replay:

The length of the game is relatively short but it was expected as most shooters and action games don’t feature lengthy games. What I didn’t expect was a lack of any type of multiplayer to keep the player interested in this lackluster title. Even if they had multiplayer for just offline, that would have been a nice addition to this purchase but there is none whatsoever. Many other shooters feature both offline and online multiplayer so they are one step ahead of ShellShock. Without that multiplayer, Nam '67 fails to compare to others that are currently being released using the same theme (i.e. Vietcong: Purple Haze, Conflict: Vietnam, Men of Valor).

Guerilla Games tried to beef up the single player with allowing you to talk to fellow soldiers. Problem is that they have nothing to say that has relevance to the war. The only that is worth while is an NPC that allows you to buy items from him. The items aren’t really aren’t of any use to the story nor to use. Simply they are just there for looks and to keep you entertained. One I’d like to talk about is that you can buy postcards that feature semi-nude women. Very stereotypical but I expected it within a shooter based on any war.

Summary:

Guerilla Games did a good job capturing the war but they didn’t deliver on other ends such as graphics and replay value. Capturing the blood, the violence, the controversy, and how it was perceived as a war that was viewed as a loss for the United States. Guerilla wanted to make the game ugly in the fact that it was a war nobody wanted to experience and I feel confident to say that this was one war I am glad I didn’t have to enter.

What I feel let down on though is that they didn’t give a pleasant experience through out the entire game. For the first few levels, you’ll love this game to death. You’ll want more head shots, more Vietcong to mow your way through, and just more violence overall. It will become apparent that ShellShock doesn’t offer that about a quarter of the way through and you’ll be disappointed.

If you must have a shooter, look elsewhere unless you have all ready tried the other options and those didn’t meet your expectations also. ShellShock: Nam '67 isn’t worth the full admission so wait to the price drops if you are still interested in buying this after reading about the letdowns I experienced.