ShellShock: Nam С67

Realizing that gamers can only kill Nazis so many times, developers have shifted their focus to a more recent conflict, Vietnam. For many, this is a controversial move; the wounds from that contentious war are still not fully healed, and have in some cases reopened given the comparison to current events in Iraq.

Even so, there are currently no less than four Vietnam-based Xbox titles slated for release in the last quarter of this year. This is not to say that developers are being insensitive to concerns and criticisms; in fact, every game is claiming to represent the conflict as realistically as possible, pulling players into the gritty horror of war with characters not as Rambo supermen, but as fallible yet courageous human beings caught in a terrible moment in history.

ShellShock: Nam '67 is distinctive among the crop of Vietnam games because it is not an American production; developer Guerrilla is from Belgium and publisher Eidos is based in the UK. Perhaps sensing that American consumers may be wary of how Europeans could make a good Vietnam game, Guerrilla has been working hard to make ShellShock: Nam '67 the most realistic and intense experience available. There will be moments of sheer terror as you are ambushed by unseen enemies in the jungle. Your platoon mates will die in VC booby traps. Your commanding officer will make mistakes, often with tragic consequences, and your fellow soldiers will begin to doubt his competency. You will see ugly war atrocities. And unique among the various Vietnam titles, ShellShock will force you to make nasty split-second moral decisions with no true "right" answer. In other words, you will, according to Guerrilla, experience what it was really like to be in 1967 Vietnam.

To further enhance the realism and avoid turning this game into a typical frag-fest, Guerrilla chose to concentrate solely on the single player campaign and omit multiplayer altogether. The only strange thing is that your character has a third-person perspective; a first-person view would have been a better, more "realistic" choice.

You will start the game as a "cherry" fresh off the plane and are immediately thrown into a battle, literally a welcome by fire. Once you survive that, you are sent out on routine patrols, always wary of booby traps and ambushes. As you progress through the dozen or so missions, you will start earning the respect of your superiors and will be given tougher assignments to accomplish. Eventually, you will find yourself on the Special Forces tasked with difficult missions requiring stealth, smarts and strategy.

When you are not fighting in the jungles, you can explore your base camp. One of the most unique features of the game, the base camp allows you to interact and socialize with NPCs, allowing you to learn things about the various characters and about upcoming missions. Talk to the firing range sergeant and you can try out the authentic weapons of the time. You can even try to bed one of the attractive nurses with your charm, or failing that, visit the Mama-San and partake in the services of a prostitute, assuming you have enough chits. Chits are the game's currency and are earned during combat, so if you're a horny stud, you'll have your work cut out for you. Chits can also be redeemed to buy drugs Ц yes, like in Apocalypse Now, you can fight fried out of your gourd. The screen will even change to show psychedelic effects bound to make you go, "Whoa, dudeЕ."

Classic rock lovers will no doubt thoroughly enjoy listening to the base camp DJ. ShellShock has 24 licensed songs from that era, including those from Roy Orbison, Percy Sledge, John Lee Hooker, Traffic, The Monkees, Sonny and Cher, and many others which add to the realistic atmosphere of the game. A soundtrack CD with these songs will also be sold separately.

Eventually, though, you'll have to leave the base camp and engage the VC. The maps include the jungle (naturally), villages, ancient ruins, dangerously open rice paddy fields, and dark claustrophobic tunnels and spider holes. Unlike the typical shooter, you will be limited to one main weapon, one sidearm, and a small number of grenades. When you get low on ammo you can pick up weapons, including those from the enemy. Be careful when approaching fallen VC, however; just like in reality, enemies will continue to fight back even when wounded or dying.

You will always need to be on the lookout for booby traps, which you can fortunately disable. Some, like spike traps, can be triggered safely once you're out of harm's way, while trip wires are a bit more tricky. Defusing a trip wire involves cutting wires in a specific order; screw up and a bad day suddenly gets even worse.

As mentioned earlier, ShellShock stands out from the competition by presenting you with several moral dilemmas that further punctuate the gritty realism of the game. For example, what do you do about that unarmed villager running away? Is he a VC trying to get reinforcements? Or is he just an innocent man who's scared out of his wits? What about those women in the rice paddy Ц are they a threat to be taken care of? You will also see horrible war atrocities like hanging or flayed bodies of American troops, and the effects of a napalm bombing on a civilian village. Needless to say, this game is not the watered down bloodless version of war we have seen in Medal of Honor Ц war is ugly and disturbing, folks.

Visually, the game has a grainy look throughout, as if you were viewing old film footage from 1967. It's a cool idea that is intended to further pull you back in time to that era, but we will have to see how it works in the final build, since filter effects like this can sometimes be distracting. The sound effects are promising to be genuine, from the rustling of the foliage to the gun shots and explosions, to the frenzied swearing of your platoon mates. Yes, expect realistic language in this game; to do otherwise would be an injustice.