- Publisher: Eidos Interactive
- Release Date: Sep 14, 2004
- Also On: PC
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The graphics, sound and gameplay are extremely well polished; the AI is also good with your platoon mates actually helping rather than hindering.
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All the fun of tagging the enemy is tied together with an admirable level of hyper-reality that manages to convince you that the game is taking a realistic stance, while so obviously being no more genuine an experience than if you had read the story in a comic. Everything is heightened, almost to the point of self-parody.
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83A fabulous representation of the Vietnam War. The atmosphere is excellent, being gritty and realistic, and not having to look after squad members is a nice break from other squad-based games.
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82After overcoming the games tricky controls you are quickly pulled into the action and the games story.
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80The line "Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules" has never been so fully embodied by a video game.
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78A decent game, although it is not quite a memorable one.
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71A slightly uneasy mix of big dumb shooter and a raw, harsher-than-normal treatment where nobody comes out well. It's the big dumb shooter that wins. [PSM2]
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70The combat is very well implemented, taking place all round, over large distances and constantly second-guessing the player as to which direction to turn next. [Aug 2004, p.102]
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70On the plus side, what's there is competently done and is flecked with powerful moments of brutality. On the downside, these spots of overt anguish aren't dealt with particularly well and lead to a reduction of the overall effect.
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You cannot kill your fellow US soldiers...why? We're not saying that it's a good move to blast your support into oblivion, but it would be a consequence to taking a gung-ho, guns blaring approach.
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70With lackluster sound, generic, objective-based (and painfully straightforward) gameplay, and graphics being the only saving grace (and only half the time at that), it's difficult to recommend Shellshock as anything more than a rental for fans of the genre.
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69The actual gameplay is quite solid, if a bit easy. Nonetheless, it's hard to recommend the game for a $49.99 purchase when there is so little replay value.
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68The enjoyment dies out after about two or three more missions though, and the game becomes repetitive all the way up until the end.
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63I found that it was quite easy to die incredibly quickly – ok, full marks for realism there – but also you could absorb colossal damage and just crawl away to recover or pick up a health pack.
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Tries to place its players into a real-life war when the experience is less about the true occurrences of the way the war was and more about a game that, even as a game, ShellShock isn't that terribly amazing.
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The cutscenes are shockingly brutal, the language is shockingly harsh, and the gameplay is shockingly bad.
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60Where Shellshock succeeds is when it resolutely refuses to pull punches in its general content, and when it hits the spot it's briefly thrilling. But for those occasional flourishes it's simply weighed down by being an average shooter, albeit one that's boosted by contentious context and some well-realised attempts at atmosphere building.
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60Not a terrible game by any means, but a bit more time in the testing tank would have surely turned it into a masterpiece to stand alongside the Conflict series.
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60The biggest problem of them all, though, is the lack of variety in missions. Fun as the run, gun, and hide gameplay trend is, it can only carry a game so far.
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The enemy AI is weak, and fog blankets backgrounds like a tarp of ugly. [Oct 2004, p.129]
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60One of the most harrowing action titles we've ever played...The game itslef is well crafted. The enemy A.I., however, is a little shaky.
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With sluggish movement and imprecise aiming, the game does not meet shooter standards, and to make things worse, the terrain is limited and may give you a tough time in finding the way around blocked objects.
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60The best strength of ShellShock: Vietnam '67 was supposed to be its realism. Unfortunately, realism is the one thing it doesn't have.
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60It's got some nice touches, like the tiny d-pad mini-games used when tackling booby traps and the authentic 1967 soundtrack, but with the likes of "Call of Duty" and "Day of Defeat" out there, Shellshock is simply too easily forgotten.
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60An enjoyable gameplay experience - but it's all over far too soon.
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60The poor gameplay sadly ruins the entire experience. [Nov 2004, p.112]
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60It's definitely enjoyable to a point, but it may also anger some of you, so definitely go into the experience with an open mind.
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58The horror of war is just a gimmicky excuse to saturate the game with a lot of blood and guts and does nothing to or for play. If anything, the tastelessly delivered scenes without any real moral implications or perceivable consequence to their having transpired detract from the experience as a whole.
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Slowdown, crappy animation, dumb A.I., and a laggy control scheme are bad enough, but it's the stupendously awful level design - with impassible areas that might as well be invisible walls - that really takes the cake. [Nov 2004, p.130]
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Character growth? Unnerving realism? I don't think so. And when you take away the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, figuratively and literally, the true gameplay is revealed as repetitive and uninspired.
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55Shellshock doesn't amount to much more than six or seven hours of gameplay. It's over almost as soon as it began which, depending on how much you paid for it, might be a good thing.
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54It certainly raises the bar on vile, pointless cutscenes. However, anyone interested in more than stubbornly average gameplay should look elsewhere.
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50It's sporadically interesting, but mostly, this is all flash and little substance. [Nov 2004, p.86]
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50You'll be on the edge after the first instances of enemy ambushes, but near the end of the game, that effect will wear off, and the initial tension will eventually turn into boredom and frustration with each new encounter. [Oct 2004, p.116]
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50Where has all the publicised "groundbreaking" technology gone – into the hills for safety? For all the size there is really only one route through each mission, as each goal offers the only save checkpoint; and these (as you soon learn) are too far apart.
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50The average aesthetics, the incredibly poor enemy AI, and poor linear level design drag down the score. The sense of actually being in a terrifying conflict however is well done here, and praise must go to the developers for creating quite an immersive experience.
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50Numbing repetition and combat that is chaotic and often unfair (sometimes in your favour, sometimes not).
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Would I suggest buying ShellShock: Nam 67? The answer would have to be "No!" Especially with way better third person shooters around like "SOCOM II."
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Another problem that I have with the game is that enemies will respawn in empty rooms. As soon as you think you've cleared a room of enemies there will be another round of them mysteriously appearing from the ether.
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50From this developer, we expect more, and this ain't it.
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50Certainly manages to shock, but underneath it's a decidedly average game that's probably more of a rental title than a must-buy prospect.
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Your trooper is a dexterous bloke, able to lean around corners, crouch behind cover and even lay down to steady his aim. However, the prone position is next to useless because you have to hold down the prone button.
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49If there were a way to "Mystery Science Theater 3000" a game, this would be considered one of the best games to do that with. Shellshock: Nam '67 is the Manos: Hand of Fate of video games.
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48Flat out awful mission and objective designs tear down what is really only a mediocre-at-best third person shooter engine.
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Firefights become more surreal than menacing when the worst-case scenario is of your fellow GIs having to catch their breath for a few seconds after being riddled with bullets. [Aug 2004, p.96]
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40There are just too many good war games out there right now for you to even bother with this one.
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Beyond atmosphere, ShellShock pretty much, well, sucks. Probably the biggest irritation is the simply horrifying level design. [Oct 2004, p.88]
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20The stupidly executed barriers would not be such a problem if the AI made up for it. Unfortunately, it appears both your allies and enemies are capable of doing only three things: run, shoot, stop.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 4
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Mixed: 0 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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JesseS.8
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TomM.9
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BenN.8Very good, u could feel like u was there, the atmosphere is the best on any game.