You don’t know man… You weren’t THERE.
The story behind Shellshock: Nam 67 is fairly straight forward. It’s 1967, and the United State’s participation in the Vietnam War is at its peak. You (initially) play the role of a young soldier who is enjoying the sights, sounds and gunfire that Vietnam has to offer for the very first time. The story is advanced through cut scenes in between missions, giving you the slightest amount of background information on your fellow soldiers, before usually killing them off. Those darned commies. Eventually, a big villain comes into play, but there’s no need to spoil that. Regardless, the story will hardly win any points for originality, but it does get the job done. These cut scenes are also where the alleged ‘character development’ takes place. Originally, it was implied there would be some sort of RPG style leveling up – but, alas, no. Character development in Shellshock: Nam 67 starts and ends with your character moving from a rookie rank, up to the special forces unit. Ah well.
…My jungle love. Oh-e-oh-e-oh.
As you would hope from a Vietnam shooter, there is plenty of detailed foliage where the majority of the game takes place in Shellshock: Nam 67 – in the tight corridors of the jungle. Your Vietcong enemies also have a nice habit of blending into said foliage when at medium/long range, making things interesting. Character models aren’t particularly excellent, lacking clarity in design and detail to bring them up to the next level. The Vietcong models are the weakest link here, all being looking suspiciously familiar. However, the death animations are more than enough to overlook this. If you intend on playing Shellshock: Nam 67, you had best get used to seeing red – and lots of it – because there is more blood here than you will find in your average shoot ‘em up.
The game also has a slight grainy, digital video effect on the graphics, similar to what can be seen in the movie 28 Days Later. This provides the game with a very unique look, and it works supremely well.
The grainy graphics in their glory.
It was the summer of 69! …Err, almost, anyway.
Shellshock: Nam 67 is certainly stacked in the audio department. The voice acting provided for both the Vietcong and American soldiers is of a mostly high standard, with the American storyline characters very well represented. Unfortunately, some of the Vietnamese females sound utterly ridiculous (whether this was the case back in 1967 or not, there’s no need for it to be replicated here) at times, their voices having a similar affect to nails on a blackboard. The Vietcong grunts don’t have enough lines of dialogue either, preferring to spout off “We’re gonna get you, GI!” over and over and OVER again. All the guns sound solid enough, with the K7 rifle in particular giving off a satisfying bang on firing.
When you’re back at base camp, you’re also treated with some licensed music from back in 1967 on the PA system. Whilst this is a nice touch, it doesn’t really serve any purpose, as the time at base camp is severely limited. You will probably finish the game without hearing half the music in the game, which is a bit of a waste.
Oh the humanity!
Shellshock: Nam 67 is, without a doubt, fantastic fun to play. The controls hold up quite well, and you will be slaying hordes of Vietcong without very little hassle. You can prone (lay flat on the turf), crouch, sprint, and even use the strafe/run technique from GoldenEye 007. You are aided by usually three teammates at a time, creating a real squad based feel in the game. Whilst their primary objective is to supply suppressing fire for you, they still are able to kill off their share of the Vietcong. Your teammates – combined with the Vietcong – help to create many enjoyable firefights. While the Vietcong aren’t overly smart, they make up for it in sheer numbers. There are certain sections of the game where you will become simply overrun with Vietcong, and must shoot like crazy – and it’s fantastic.
Your squad members helping you slaughter the locals.
Your characters health has three levels: green, orange and red. Health recovers over time, but if sustain three quick hits in the green zone, you move into the orange zone, and cannot go back into the green zone without a medikit. Recovering health is certainly a questionable idea, because when combined with having three squad members, it’s actually fairly difficult to die, short of stumbling into a booby trap.
Booby traps are introduced in the second level – and occur sporadically during the game – as an interesting way to add some additional gameplay that doesn’t involve you trigger finger. To disarm them, you usually must press the direction pad in a certain sequence before time runs out. These traps work quite well, but aren’t generally lethal – probably a good thing, as you will run straight through many of them.
In between missions, your character will head back to base camp. Here you can engage in some totally pointless conversations with other soldiers, change your weapon, and, buy some stuff with the ‘chits’ you accumulate throughout the missions. About the only thing of note you can actually buy is a local Vietnamese girl for some ‘boom boom’. Of course, you can’t actually see anything, but it is, if nothing else, comical. The base is interesting the first one or two times through, but by the tenth or eleventh visit, it’s nothing but a waste of time.
In order to complete each mission, you are required to do a series of completely linear objectives. I.E, run through this village, blow up that AA gun, destroy this tunnel, and so on. Hardly groundbreaking, and would quite possibly drive the player to boredom before too long.
…That’s it?
However, this is never a factor in Shellshock: Nam 67, because the experience is over in roughly six hours – less for a competent gamer. There are roughly thirteen missions in the game, all of which can be beaten in rapid time, which is a big disappointment. Even worse is the lack of multiplayer. WHY!? This game is just crying out for a two-player co-operative mode, or AT LEAST a death match. Sigh.
There isn’t even much in the way of unlockables, either. You can obtain some semi-nude pictures of the local prostitutes. During the mission there are trophies that can also be picked up, as well as level rankings – but this just isn’t enough for a game with no multiplayer.
Even he’s run out of things to do.
So close
Shellshock: Nam 67 is a good game throughout, with solid graphics, well above average audio and some extremely fun and intense shooting gameplay. Unfortunately, the length of the game is an utter disappointment – 4-6 hours just does not cut it. Why there is no trace of multiplayer is a total mystery. Because of life span problems, Shellshock: Nam 67 falls from the good-very good category, straight into average territory. What a shame.
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