Shellshock: Nam ‘67 review (PS2)

When I first saw the movie Aliens, I was convinced that it was partly a metaphor for the Vietnam War: well equipped soldiers going to their deaths against an enemy they couldn’t understand, soldiers dying without knowing why. Conversely, and much more simply, Shellshock: Nam ‘67 seems to use the Vietnam War as a metaphor for the movie Aliens, with dumb, outnumbered soldiers randomly spraying gunfire against endless hordes of identical enemies.

It might have been an effort on the part of the game designers to induce a certain mindset in the players, but after the first mission, all your enemies begin to look the same. The drab repetitive graphics become a big dull blur, making the only distinguishing feature of your opponents their conical hats. An hour into the game, you’ll probably have killed more than seventy conical hat wearing people and you’ll begin to feel numb to it all - by then walking into a village of Vietnamese farmers feels like walking into yet another ambush. Clever trickery to put you into the boots of a paranoid unstable American soldier? Or just a lack of proper character models?

They all look the same to me

Except that ambushes, when they do happen, have no actual sense of being ambushes. Just a sense of someone turning the dial that controls the number of enemies up to “annoying”. There are obvious arcade gameplay conventions at work: immortal, but idiotic, teammates; a health meter that regenerates over time á la Halo; and (very) fixed paths through the levels, even when things look like open jungle (curse those impenetrable bushes!). These elements sit uneasily with the tension and pseudo-realistic atmosphere the game goes for, with the player sometimes struggling to figure out if it’s the accuracy of a weapon or the unrealistic bullet resistance of his enemies that’s working against him in any given situation.

Base camp interludes between levels let you soak up the atmosphere, trading chits for time with prostitutes or drugs, that help steady your aim and boost your stamina. Compared with the general controversy the game seems to court, they don’t stand out. In this post GTA era,it almost seems as if drugs and prostitutes are prerequisite in “adult” games.

The horror, the horror

Surprisingly though, there are still a few things that stand out in Shellshock as being impressive. The soundtrack, for one, sets the mood very well. Although you hardly hear any of it except for when you’re in base camp, which seems like a waste. It may not be realistic to hear rock ‘n’ roll while gunning down Charlie in the jungle, but it would have at least made the experience a little less bland. The graphics too, seem badly put together at first, but under close inspection they can be quite sharp and defined in places. The vegetation and texturing is sometimes actually quite impressive. But all of this technical excellence is swallowed up by the generally poor quality of level design and the character models which lack consistency. For example, the American GIs have a lot of detail on them, but their helmets look like they’ve been badly glued on, thus ruining the whole effect. The only thing this bodes well for, is the developer’s next game, the much vaunted Killzone. There’s obviously some technical talent showing here, so let’s hope the design holds up.

There are high points in the gameplay too, but often it’s more a case of atmosphere winning out, rather than enjoyable gameplay. The gruesome power of a fixed machine gun emplacement or the atmospheric stealth missions, these are the most exciting moments that Shellshock has to offer. Unfortunately, they’re also the moments that are almost completely devoid of challenge.

A mission, for my sins

Many games seem to set out to push boundaries and be as controversial as possible. Sometimes, the subject matter of the game makes this unavoidable. Without getting into a protracted argument, Shellshock can seem offensive at times, but not because it depicts events that some people might find offensive, that’s just the nature of the conflict being shown. It comes across as offensive because it depicts these events badly and with no consistency in gameplay or atmosphere.

The experience of Shellshock is similar to the Vietnam War in perhaps the wrong ways. Numbing repetition and combat that is chaotic and often unfair (sometimes in your favour, sometimes not). Like the real thing, if you end up enjoying it, it’ll probably be over sooner. The uncomfortable feeling of an unjust conflict that the developers try to create only serves to bolster the uncomfortable feeling of dealing with the clumsy gameplay. Ultimately, Shellshock does the wrong things for the wrong reasons and there are no winners, only casualties.