ShellShock 2: Blood Trails

A budget title and it shows. The visuals, level design, AI, and just about anything else you can think of can't match up with the top-tier first-person shooters. On top of that, you only get 10 brief stages and no multiplayer options.

Sadly, Rebellion's staid middle-of-the-road performance continues with Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, which, although not unequivocally broken, is so thoroughly unappealing and 'last generation' that it's all-but guaranteed a well-deserved place amid the lower echelons of gaming mediocrity.

ShellShock 2: Blood Trails spices up Vietnam with a liberal application of zombies, but the controls and the generic shooter gameplay leave a lot to be desired.

Frustrating and joyless. [Apr 2009, p.74]

A failed concept which could have succeeded, but due to many errors in this game it didn't. The only good thing of Shellshock 2 is the smooth gameplay.

Shellshock 2 is incredibly short, largely unsatisfying, and even painful to play at times.

Even when Shellshock flirts with being playable, you realise there's a dozen PS3 shooters better than this mess. [Apr 2009, p.78]

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails is an insolvent try to bring back to life a forgettable war franchise, changing its context to the horror style. No matter from which angle you choose to look at Blood Trails, it’s a horrendous videogame. Boring, exasperating, and ugly in the most literal sense of the word.

Shellshock 2 combines technical inferiority as a shooter with a woeful attempt at survival horror. It’s kicked around and stomped to death by Call Of Duty and Silent Hill in their respective genres, and is thus left as an entirely useless exercise in gaming terms.

Had this been released five years ago it would still have stood out as a poorly made FPS, so released into a market with the likes of Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 sitting pretty on store shelves, and Killzone 2 due any day now, it's hard to see any reason to add this to your collection.

Shellshock 2 will shock you, but for all the wrong reasons. Even if you're a fan of the genre, it's a technically inept and totally unenjoyable experience.

The framerate is pathetic and the textures are sub-PS2. [Apr 2009, p.96]

The Vietnam War has never seemed so horrific in this shockingly poor first person shooter.

Shellshock 2 looks like it’s been stuck in time. Everybody nowadays wants to play games with great controls, fantastic graphics and a lovely story. All of these elements are missing in is this game. This game is so bad, Michael Jackson wouldn’t want to touch it. We suggest everybody stays away from this game like it is a bomb threat, because this game would make you explode out of rage.

Shellshock 2 gives the word uninspiring a new meaning. The game never, and i repeat never ever, offers the player any form of originality or even simple fun. Five frustrating hours, no more no less, make of Shellshock 2 entertainment of the lowest order. If you can call it entertainment.

Shellshock 2 is truly a bad game. It's short, it's ugly and it's uninspiring. Just what Rebellion were thinking before releasing this travesty is beyond me, because it doesn't have a leg to stand on in comparison to most PS2 FPSs, let alone anything the current-gen consoles have to offer. Leave this one alone.