ShellShock 2: Blood Trails Review [PS3, X360]

Posted March 18, 2009 by Joey in PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360.

Reviewed on the Xbox 360

Boy did I make a bad choice by renting this game. ShellShock 2: Blood Trails has started the race for the worst game of 2009 by unleashing zombies during the height of the Vietnam War. I remember renting the first ShellShock game for Gamecube way back in the day, and found that it was tastefully controversial as well as a good war game. ShellShock 2 is in no way a sequel to the first title as it introduces an entirely new plot in an entirely different genre.

Blood Trails is a first person horror game featuring a far out concept for a plot, mundane graphics and nothing beyond the single player campaign. While Call of Duty: World at War tactfully adds zombies in for a bonus game, ShellShock 2 throws them right into the plot of the game, which takes away from it being your typical historical first person shooter, or any other credibility it had towards a Vietnam War setting.

The concept of Blood Trails is quite simple. You were recently drafted into the Army and sent into Vietnam on a secret mission. The reason you skip right to doing your own thing is because your brother was also on a secret mission that ended in chaos. He was the only survivor, but he became insane afterwards and the brass think that you may be able to get through to him. As the story unfolds, you will find out that there has been a zombie outbreak that has turned against the good intentions of those who created it, and it will be up to you to find out what is going on. There are two alternate endings to the game, which is about the only replay value that Blood Trails can boast.

You would at least want to know what this game is about first before you pick it up. I just remembered how interesting the first ShellShock was and totally ignored what trying to find out what this game was about. The use of “psychological horror” and “fear” does not necessarily mean that this is a game that is going to scare you. Games like F.E.A.R., Silent Hill, and Resident Evil will scare you, but ShellShock goes more along the lines of Prey or Doom 3.

The one thing I did like about the story is that your player character does all the narration and even talks in-game, so at least you are not another floating hand with a gun type. Some of the characters you encounter are also fun to watch, such as Sgt. Griffin who is your stereotypical gung-ho war hardened vet. Other characters are not so developed, like the two Hollywood types you run into that have little to do with the plot of the game, but have short interruptions in it.

Like any first person shooter the controls are about the standard and almost easy to use. Tossing grenades in this game is like playing Russian Roulette-you do not know where they will go. Sometimes you can do a number on yourself by accidentally tossing one while you are crouched because the grenade will just be dropped in front of you. The guns are also very standard to the times with little variation. You will at least need a different type of gun for different circumstances such as the shotgun for close encounters with zombies and the carbine rifle for easy pick-offs. The M16 and AK47 rifles eat up ammo with little effect, and the other weird turnoff is that you can only hold one main assault weapon at a time. So if you were carrying a shotgun with 90 shells then picking up an AK47 will automatically convert those shotgun shells into 7.57mm ammo.

Most of the action involves you running into small U.S. outposts that are about to be attacked by the VietCong. Then you usually end up by yourself to fend off hordes of zombies that come out of nowhere to attack you. The zombies are no family friendly George Romero, ‘keep in your garden shed’ types, these bad boys are the 28 Days Later, ‘cannot get away from zombies.’  You cannot run away from them as they will jump and claw at you from behind so it may take a couple of respawning at checkpoints to finally get past certain areas of the game. Booby traps and other environmental disasters await to spring your demise, but with the added quick tap button sequences you really have nothing to worry about.

There are only ten missions in Blood Trails and these missions are even shorter when you go back and replay them. This game lacks so much that comes standard with your average first person shooter games, that it practically begs you to stay away from this game. There is no online multiplayer and the game also lacks online campaign leaderboards. There are no cooperative modes or bonus missions and materials as well. This is just a straight up single player game, that also happens to be very short and featureless.

I will give Blood Trails credit where it is due, but there are a lot of problems with the graphics. Some frame rate and glitches occur during the game, but most concerning are the backwoods graphics. The dark setting sometimes works, but effects like the gunshots take away from the realism. The M16 the sarge uses to take out a curious VC is barely audible even though you are in a small room. Take a close look at the GI allies you have, and you will notice that most of them are clones of one single character model. Maybe there was more to the story than zombies? The gore is spot on for what you would expect with plenty of blood and guts, but I doubt some of the wounded characters would actually still be alive if they were split open from waist up with all internal organs exposed. Well, the guy play does mention something about being in Hell. Clones are never a good thing to see in a game in this generation, but you also have to deal with some not so incredible environments during the missions as well as repeated sound bites of dialogue are screaming. One VC scream soundbite sounds like someone was way too close to the microphone when recording that bit.

I would say that this is a game to avoid. Blood Trails has no redeeming value for being a rental (except for the Xbox 360 achievements) and once you beat this game there is nothing left to do with it than trade it in for something that will last longer. There are a lot of problems with Blood Trails and in this genre of survival horror games you either have a great game or a horrible one. Blood Trails unfortunately falls into the horrible category. By straying very far from the original ShellShock, it leads former fans into the haters camp and leaves newcomers feeling burned out by zombie games. A few aspects of Blood Trails are good, but many problems and the lack of replay value make this a game to avoid.

Tagged as Blood Trails, Eidos Interactive, Rebellion, ShellShock 2