Shellshock 2: Blood Trails Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 18th February 2009

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Zombies invade Nam... oh joy?

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails Details:

Goto Shellshock 2: Blood Trails Game Page

	First Person Shooter
	PC/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	Rebellion
	Eidos

18+

Out Now

In 2004 games developers and publishers seemingly had, had enough of World War II for the setting of shooters and instead started to churn out games focusing on the Vietnam conflict! However, this turned out to be nothing more than a simple fad, although this hasn’t stopped Eidos bringing us a sequel, and frankly we wished they hadn’t bothered!

For the second instalment Rebellion has switched the game to a first person perspective, and given it a horror setting. The game puts you in the role of a fresh recruit who has been posted in the thick of the action on the border. However, you soon discover you have only been given such a posting because of your brother, a member of a Special Forces team who has been driven quite mad, after going in search of the mysterious white Knight, a virus that turns people including your brother and many of his GI friends into zombies!

To say that Shellshock 2 is bad, is sadly an insult to bad games, in fact this game is so poor if I was to say what I really felt about it I would probably be arrested. Even writing about the shockingly awful experience it offers, is almost unbearable, but I will do my best to dissect this drab title for the purpose of this review.

Unlike many games that are released, it’s not one major bug point that spoils Shellshock 2, rather than everything. The game design is terrible pacing through towns and jungles’ shooting bad guys has never been so unrewarding. Enemies are dumb and pose little threat, as they march towards you in mindless waves from set points on the game map! This goes on until the time comes where you reach a point in the level where they simply disappear or the game engine decides enough of these mindless sprites have been sent to silicon hell and a message pops on screen to tell you, you have completed an objective you simply don’t care about.

Despite the enemy seemingly being mindless, like the hordes of zombies you’ll also come up against. It doesn’t stop them from being able to hit the target with every single shot. This coupled with the fact it can also be hard to see where they are actually shooting from makes Shellshock 2 an overly frustrating affair.

The game has a very staged feeling to it because of this, and the vast number of set piece action sequences it deploys such as the melee scuffles, turret sequences or the need to avoid booby traps by repetitive button mashing! These sequences of course are handled by the sixaxis controller on the PS3, yet it’s probably one of the worst implementations of sixaxs control I’ve encountered and makes such sequences in the version almost unplayable!

The game can’t seem to get anything right basic gameplay mechanics are terrible such as the inaccurate aiming system, snail paced action, the predictable gameplay, the need to press a button in order to pick-up ammo and weapons but all these fail in comparison to the most irritating aspect of the gameplay! That honour falls to how long it takes to reload a weapon, which will often result in your death and deservedly so.

The game is relatively short, if you can bare the torture until the end and the game lacks any replay value as it is completely devoid of multiplayer support, although that may not be a bad thing with a single player campaign so poor.

Visually the game is ugly! Textures are bland, character models ugly and animation almost robotic. The game suffers from constant popups and environment and level design are nothing but uninspired. As you’ve probably guessed the games sound design is also bad, with a forgettable soundtrack, stereotypical voice acting and sound effects that are more fitting to consoles of by gone generations.

The first person shooter genre isn’t short of games that are poor, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails isn’t one of them it’s simply terrible and by far the worst game I’ve played on the current generation of consoles. What Eidos and Rebellion were thinking when they came up with this is a bigger mystery then the games story?