Shellshock: Nam '67

Ever since I played Revenant, Eidos has held a special place in my heart. I always have viewed this company as being innovative with game titles, and products such as Thief and Hitman just keep renewing my faith in them.

Ondanks het gebrek aan vernieuwing en enkele vervelende bugs, kan Shellshock de hardcore fans misschien nog wel bekoren.

The sheer guts and determination that the soldiers who found themselves on a Tour of Duty over in 'Nam, together with jabs at the title's competitors, is the inspiration for the promotion of Shellshock, No Honour. No Medal - Just Survive. With an attitude like that, and the fact that the game has been given a BBFC rated 18 certificate, it would seem on the surface that the developers have really tried to get as realistic a representation of the conditions and the horrific experiences that the US Armed Forces had to face into Shellshock: Nam '67.

ShellShock: Nam '67 isn’t a bad game by any means. The 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. Fans of the genre should at least rent it to give it whirl and experience the most genuinely shocking war game that has been released.

War games are really making a big hit in the retail market, with players getting to pick from everything from the Revolutionary War to the conflict in the gulf. Vietnam was one of those things that got some attention, and as of late we have been seeing more and more titles hit the shelves based around the events that took place during that time period. The newest addition to the Vietnam games list to hit store shelves is Shellshock, Nam ’67 by Eidos Interactive. While there are other titles out there to choose from, Shellshock does a good job in portraying all of the action and even atrocities that were found in the war back in the 60’s … but the game overall does come off as shallow, and you probably won’t take too long to go through it either.

Hippies using flower power; soldiers who were strong, and then some who cowered; an enemy whose overwhelming numbers, invisibility, and experience turned the war for us from sweet to sour. You remember it...Nam. You either knew about, were in it, have heard about it, learned about it, or died by it (ghosts know how to read). Vietnam was one of the most messy struggles split up by controversy and mayhem. Protesters fought it, soldiers fought in it, and the enemy didn't even want the Americans in their country to help out their people in whom they were trying to overpower.

Overall, ShellShock: Nam '67 is a very mixed bag. Is it worth your precious $50' Yes and no. If you're looking for a quick fix game that packs a lot of action, gore, and challenge, by all means, buy this game. If you're searching for the perfect war game that encompasses all of Vietnam's tragic history and all of the pain and tears associated with it, this game could be worth a rental, but definitely not a purchase. For everything ShellShock does right, namely engineering a pure action game with some cool features like the base camp, it manages to do two things wrong, such as instituting a controller-hurling range of difficulty, and essentially, lacking overall innovation. ShellShock is very much like the Vietnam War itself; painful, harsh, difficult to overcome, and leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

ShellShock: Nam '67 ging ons met de gruwel en het realisme van een oorlog confronteren. Dat het daar helemaal niet in slaagt, is dan ook enigszins een teleurstelling - net als het overgrote deel van het game. Kortom: een gemiddelde shooter met gemiddelde gameplay die ons weinig kan boeien.

Overall, ShellShock: Nam '67 is a very mixed bag. Is it worth your precious $50' Yes and no. If you're looking for a quick fix game that packs a lot of action, gore, and challenge, by all means, buy this game. If you're searching for the perfect war game that encompasses all of Vietnam's tragic history and all of the pain and tears associated with it, this game could be worth a rental, but definitely not a purchase. For everything ShellShock does right, namely engineering a pure action game with some cool features like the base camp, it manages to do two things wrong, such as instituting a controller-hurling range of difficulty, and essentially, lacking overall innovation. ShellShock is very much like the Vietnam War itself; painful, harsh, difficult to overcome, and leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

Second only to Apocalypse Now, Shellshock provides one of grittiest, fairest, bloodiest accounts of the Vietnam war ever to reach popular culture. With that said, Eidos’ most recent foray into the squad-based action genre, is, in every aspect, a lesson in shame. Shame of a nation, fighting an ugly war, destroying millions of innocent lives, the shame of men, committing some acts most unbecoming of America’s men in uniform, and finally, perhaps least importantly, the shame of a video game style. Yes, if the 60’s were the end of America’s innocence, Nam ’67 is definitely the end of squad-based combat, and it isn’t pretty.

Somebody in the game industry decided that 2004 would be a good year to slam us with an unceasing flow of Vietnam titles. While WWII has always been a popular fountain of source material for games and movies, Vietnam, perhaps due to it’s controversial nature, has never shared a fraction of the limelight. Eidos and Guerilla Games are hoping to change that with ShellShock: Nam ‘67, just one of several games based on the Vietnam war.

Overall, I feel that ShellShock: Nam '67 had some great concepts and did a great job of realistically recreating a very controversial war. As the game starts, it states that this is purely fictional, but you still wonder if there were similar missions that the recruits had to go through. However, 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. With only 11 missions, this game is more of a rental than a purchase candidate. You may not find another game that represents war like this one, but with its downfalls, it's not a must-have.

If telling the shocking truth of Vietnam is this title's trump card, then it doesn't have a whole lot to cling to. There are gruesome scenes, but that's nothing new to gamers. The shocking truth of Vietnam is more subtly embedded in the American mind than someone getting his head blown off.

If telling the shocking truth of Vietnam is this title's trump card, then it doesn't have a whole lot to cling to. There are gruesome scenes, but that's nothing new to gamers. The shocking truth of Vietnam is more subtly embedded in the American mind than someone getting his head blown off.

ShellShock: Nam ’67 is shocking on several levels. The cutscenes are shockingly brutal, the language is shockingly harsh, and the gameplay is shockingly bad. While the media would have you believe there is some epic war experience waiting for you in Nam ’67, it simply boils down to an action shooter that requires very little thought or skill.

Shellshock really has nothing much to offer. In addition to being lackluster the game is also short-lived, clocking in at a little less than six hours. The gameplay is just so brainless that soon all you notice are the disgustingly violent cut scenes, making the game feel more like a snuff film than a shooter. Do yourself a favor and ignore this one. You have better things to spend your money on.

The heat is unbearable, cruel. Steam seems to rise from the very ground as if Hell itself was threatening to split the damp soil open and all around us the wildlife seemed to go insane. Every sound I hear makes me think Charlie will spring out of the bush and kill my friends or me. Even with the men by my side, though, I feel alone. Welcome to Vietnam during the worst conflict in warfare history. It isn’t pretty, but then again war never is but at least in video game form it should make for a fun and unforgettable experience. Yet is Shellshock: Nam ‘67 worthy of being remembered?

One of the first action sequences in Platoon chronicles Private Chris Taylor's first night in the bush. Oliver Stone shows his squad locking and loading and slides them into a mosquito hole with bulbous eyes and dripping skin. Taylor blames stinking heat and insects for his inability to sleep while the others watch. Claymores hang in the trees and the dark. And they all drift away in the end, soaked and exhausted. When Taylor wakes the rain is ceased and yellow mist drapes languidly over crystal moonlight, leaves and twigs and solid silence rolled with water drops. Then he sees the straw hats, the VC in the milky atmosphere, ghosts in the trees.

Shellshock is as painfully straightforward as can be. Somewhere between conception and launch, something went wrong. The 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. Since it's then not particularly horrific, it's just a game and not the much vaunted "experience" it was intended to be. Since it's then just a game, we have to recognize its many faults and few horrific positives. These faults make playing through Shellshock more tiresome and frustrating then thrilling or terrifying. And these positives do little to change that.

Shellshock: Nam '67 is a third-person shooter with some serious problems. First, it's set in Vietnam but often feels more like Vermont, North Carolina, or possibly some sort of sparsely vegetated western set that came with a long forgotten Hollywood back lot. Number two: Given all accounts I've been privy to, Vietnam was horrific. While plenty of games have come sporting this particular war theme to further their own specific kind of action, Shellshock is one of the few titles that actually boasts the horror of Vietnam as a selling point. But then it doesn't actually deliver any real horror, so we're pretty safe on that front. Instead, its superfluous violence is laughably animated, less it comes as part of a senseless cutscene that develops no story, but serves as a happy medium used to showcase unnecessary brutality that's completely irrelevant to the game and the plot. But hey, look at what one knife, one jerk, and one helpless victim can make when they're all put together!

Shellshock: Nam '67 is a third-person shooter with some serious problems. First, it's set in Vietnam but often feels more like Vermont, North Carolina, or possibly some sort of sparsely vegetated western set that came with a long forgotten Hollywood back lot.

Think of Nam 67 as Medal of Honor, in 3rd person, in Vietnam. Take that as you will, but for me, the game fell short of potential. Eidos delayed the release from June of this year, until September, supposedly because they had a strong enough 2nd quarter as it was, but the truth is probably that the game needed some fine-tuning. To be candid, it still needs some work, but for the military enthusiasts out there, consider adding this to your collection.

In short, ShellShock 'Nam 67 is not an entirely bad game; I still had some fun with it. Sadly, that wasn't nearly enough to justify the short single-player mode, no multiplayer and mediocre game play overall. The game does have some grittiness to it, but it seems to be geared more towards teenagers who would feel better about themselves playing a mature game, than it is towards mature gamers who are looking to get a little depth to go with the arcade action. I don't feel particularly good about saying this (mainly because people put a lot of effort into this project), but I fail to see how ShellShock 'Nam 67 is ever going to survive in this ruthless and competitive market. It sounds harsh, but isn't that the moral of this story? War is hell, but so is this market - it simply doesn't take any prisoners.

Note Générale 11/20On ne peut pas vraiment dire que Shellshock soit un mauvais jeu, mais il possède trop de lacunes pour dépasser le marasme ambiant des soft sans réel caractère et dépositaire d'une volonté marketing aboutissant au vite fait, pas très bien fait. Manquant d'assise, laissant passer de grossières erreurs, et ne se focalisant que d'une manière monoculaire sur une partie de l'histoire complexe, le titre de Guerrilla rate le tournant de la qualité sincère. Possédant un véritable potentiel, dû à une immersion passionnante, ce jeu ne connaîtra pas sa destinée rêvée. Nous sommes encerclés.

I enjoyed the first couple of missions of Shellshock: Nam ’67, but then the game went sour. It just doesn’t deliver on its promises. 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. There has to be a better way than this to spend a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Well, I’m shocked. Not in a good way mind you. I’m shocked Guerilla Games, the developer of Shellshock: Nam ‘67, resorted to a gimmick to get their game over. The gimmick in question: the atrocities of the Vietnam War. But when you strip away the blood and gore, the cursing, the sexual themes and the violent cutscenes, you’re left with a shell of a game - if you’ll pardon the pun - that fails to deliver the unnerving realism it advertises.

Well, I’m shocked. Not in a good way mind you. I’m shocked Guerilla Games, the developer of Shellshock: Nam 67, resorted to a gimmick to get their game over. The gimmick in question: the atrocities of the Vietnam War. But when you strip away the blood and gore, the cursing, the sexual themes and the violent cutscenes, you’re left with a shell of a game - if you’ll pardon the pun - that fails to deliver the unnerving realism it advertises.

At one point, a member of your squad ties a prostitute to an upright mattress, beats her mercilessly with his fists, and then takes a giant Rambo knife to her breasts before finally slitting her throat. This is the one way that ShellShock lives up to its hype--it certainly raises the bar on vile, pointless cutscenes. However, anyone interested in more than stubbornly average gameplay should look elsewhere.

It looks like the Vietnam War is quickly becoming the new World War II. ShellShock: Nam '67 is the second Vietnam War-themed shooter to be released in as many weeks, and another three will arrive in stores over the next month. ShellShock attempts to differentiate itself from the pack by threatening to provide a disturbing level of realism, or, as the official Web site puts it, "the shocking realities and tragedies of what actually happened out in the jungle." Unfortunately, what this means in practical terms is that ShellShock is a run-of-the-mill shooter with periodic interruptions for bad language and really violent cutscenes.

It looks like the Vietnam War is quickly becoming the new World War II. ShellShock: Nam '67 is the second Vietnam War-themed shooter to be released in as many weeks, and another three will arrive in stores over the next month. ShellShock attempts to differentiate itself from the pack by threatening to provide a disturbing level of realism, or, as the official Web site puts it, "the shocking realities and tragedies of what actually happened out in the jungle." Unfortunately, what this means in practical terms is that ShellShock is a run-of-the-mill shooter with periodic interruptions for bad language and really violent cutscenes.

Shellshock is a mess. It's no more controversial than a hundred other games you'll have seen before, all of which play better than this. Look beyond the undeserved 18-certificate, and you'll find little more than a below-par action-shooter that's about as much fun to play as pulling a VC bayonet out of your gonads. It smells of something hot and strong, and it ain't napalm...

Shellshock aurait mérité une meilleure réalisation et deux fois plus de contenu. Il pourra intéresser les amateurs d'atmosphère violente réussie et ceux qui cherchent un jeu sur le Vietnam qui ne soit pas multijoueur.

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.

En dehors de vos petites guerres, vous passerez vos journées à faire du shopping. Vous pourrez en effet acheter diverses choses mais aussi faire des échanges. C’est assez inhabituel dans ce genre de jeux, où l’on a plutôt l’habitude de passer d’une mission à une autre sans pouvoir vivre sa vie de soldat. En somme, Shellshock nous propose deux jeux en un, et c’est tant mieux vu la violence extrême du titre. Faut bien détendre le joueur pour qu’il ne pense pas aux conséquences de ses actes lors de la précédente mission. Bien que techniquement le jeu soit dans l’ensemble honnête, c’est son contenu qui nous place plus en spectateur qui dérange. Voici un titre qui plaira aux amateurs de réalisme qui se moquent de réfléchir un tant soit peu à l’idéologie douteuse du titre, mais genre de joueurs fait-il partie du lectorat de Gamezine ? Soyez plus intelligents que les concepteurs du jeu, et si vous aviez vraiment envie de l’acheter, sachez d’abord vous poser les bonnes questions.

Shellshock se voulait choquant, voire éducatif. On peut lui reconnaître d'éviter de glorifier les GI en n'oubliant pas de montrer quelques cas de soldats peu héroïques, voire psychotiques mais en dehors de ça... Le soft de Guerilla est loin d'être traumatisant, simplement il montre des têtes trop polygonnées dépourvues de corps, un peu facile. Le titre manque cruellement d'envergure dans son ambiance qui se montre trop plate et mal mise en scène, rien de dérangeant à signaler ici, ni de malsain ou quoi que se soit. Avec sa réalisation plus que moyenne, il ne reste à Shellshock que son gameplay simpliste qui fait de lui un shooter assez anodin mais nerveux pour amateurs en manque. On, lui préférera Vietcong, de loin. Ceux qui attendaient le Platoon ou le Full Metal Jacket du jeu vidéo peuvent retourner sur leurs platines DVD.

Jeder Anti-Kriegsfilm ist meiner Meinung nach zu großen Teilen immer noch ein Kriegsfilm. Doch bei Filmen bin ich nicht so sehr eingebunden wie bei Spielen, denn ich schaue nur zu, statt selbst aktiv zu werden. Es mag ja verständlich sein, die Gräuel eines Krieges zeigen zu wollen, ich will sie aber nicht selbst durchführen müssen. Und wenn mich Shellshock dazu zwingt, am Boden kauernde Bauern oder leicht bekleidete Prostituierte zu erschießen, finde ich das abstoßend.

ShellShock: Nam ’67 sounded oh so good at first: we were promised gritty realism unmatched by any other Vietnam-based video game; that we would be forced to make difficult moral decisions; and that our character would develop from a green “cherry” to an elite Special Forces killing machine.

In the end, ShellShock: Nam '67 proves that shock-value can only carry a game so far. All in all, it's easily one of the better third-person action games on the PlayStation 2 console, but it falls short in more areas than it succeeds in. If you're a hardcore war buff, and you can't wait to get behind the scope of an M-14 assault rifle, then go ahead and pick it up. For the rest of you, it's worth checking out just to see what all the hype was about, but I'd suggest a rental before you lay down your cash.

I tried so hard to like this game but I wasn't given a continuing reason to want to continue to play it. The story was interesting, but I didn't feel a deep enough connection with my character to truly care if he lived or died. The cut scenes were detailed and care was put into them, but they were too few and far between. Skirmishes were plentiful, however, too easy: you could mostly wait them out and just play through them conservatively with the liberal and forgiving damage system. If you rush in like a hero that you tend to want to be in these kinds of games, you usually get massacred. Shellshock suffers from a bout of indecision; it's not enough of an action or FPS game and it doesn't have enough drama or tension or story to be engaging. Hoping for Apocalypse Now, or Full Metal Jacket, I got Rambo sans Stallone. Shellshock: Nam '67 needs to sound off like it has a pair!

In the end, Shellshock: Nam '67 has a bit of style but not much new gameplay behind it. It looks good and it's a serviceable shooter (you do get to shoot things, after all), but the game play just isn't that exciting, especially when you consider that it has no multiplayer and the single-player is so linear.

ShellShock: Nam ’67 isn’t really a terrible game by accounts – the action still has a bit of a tactical curve, and it can still be pretty fun if you play it more like a general shooter than trying to make a realistic title out of it – but ultimately, it fails in my eyes as an innovative title that people will find themselves wanting to pick up in the face of Doom 3 and the impending Half-Life 2. As far as Vietnam shooters go, I guess there isn’t all that much better available (we’ll see once I check out Conflict: Vietnam), but I really can’t see any exceptional reason to blow your hard-earned cash on this game. It just doesn’t have that special flash to get you in and keep you craving for more even after you’ve beaten it, and a lack of multiplayer support drives the nail in the coffin. It sounded great on paper and Eidos certainly put enough effort behind the hype machine to get me excited about this game, but all I ended up with was a series of disappointments.

Хочется сильных впечатлений? Запустите Vietcong, а лучше — возьмите в видеопрокате вышеупомянутые киноленты. Позарез необходим шок? Посмотрите документальный фильм с кадрами исторической хроники. ShellShock не в состоянии предложить вам ни то, ни другое.

I said that the game crossed a line with me, and here it is: it portrays the killing of specific, theoretically real (in that they're virtual stand-ins for the actual soldiers that fought in the war) people as nothing more than a gruesome shooting gallery. For me, it didn't matter that the game's design was perfectly acceptable, or even that the game's morality was interestingly muddied, with American troops being portrayed as every bit as vicious and bloodthirsty as the enemies they faced. I found the whole idea of trying to use this conflict as a setting for a mindless action game reprehensible. At some point everyone has to decide when enough is enough. And now I have.

Vietnam-Shooter sind momentan voll im Trend. Auch Shellshock Nam’67 von den Guerrilla Studios schlägt in diese Kerbe. Im Gegensatz zu der Konkurrenz, will Sie Publisher Eidos mit diesem Produkt allerdings nicht nur einfache Dschungelkämpfe ausfechten lassen, sondern dem Spieler auch alle die Gräueltaten, die in diesem Krieg passiert sind, näher bringen. Was sich hinter dem Spiel tatsächlich verbirgt, zeigt folgender Artikel.