It appears that Lavender's Psyduck roommate, Vyvyan, has stolen a tank for her to use during a shoot for the new review cover. Also appears Vyvyan's gonna keep it for herself afterwards. Silly girl, that ain't gonna fit in the apartment's parking spots >3

***

The Sega Saturn was one of those poor forgotten game consoles of the 90's. Now it did have some unique and memorable titles, like Panzer Dragoon and NiGHTS Into Dreams. In terms of graphics, it could compete with Sony's PS1, though it does lack a noticeable form of polish that the Sony console tends to do better. A price of $300 when it was new, and an overall lack of first and third party support in comparison to its Nintendo and Sony competitors respectively, made this one of those platforms that was easily overlooked.

Today I'm looking at one of those multiplatform games that found it's way onto the Saturn, though the game itself is an obscure bit of software.

Shellshock was released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in 1996. Published by U.S. Gold and developed by Core Design, the Brits known for the creation of the Tomb Raider series, this game has definitely fallen off the radar. Searching Wikipedia and IMDb turned up blanks, and GameFAQs gives very little info about its existence. Regardless, I have a copy of the Saturn version in my possession. After a quick trip to the components shop for a lithium CR2032 battery for the Saturn's internal memory (bitches behind the counter don't know a Rattata with a skin condition when they's see one), let's get started.

The game starts with a bit of exposition that pretty much serves as the only real story. In 1994, a military supply convoy working in war-torn central Europe came under attack by the opposition. Their superiors responded to their call for aid by promptly denying it, saying that they were expendable. Written off as MIA, some of the men and women of the convoy survived. During some inteterminable amount of time, these modern day ronin were picked up by a mysterious figure going by the name “The Man”. The Man gave them funds, a clandestine base on New York's shoreline, and a plethora of arms and armor. In exchange, The Man has one condition: take revenge in a way that helps those that need it. Instead of straight up vengeance, this group, now known as “The Wardens”, deploys soldiers to warzones where civilian's needs for food and medicine are met with political blockades and military resistance. Their job is to cut the red tape the only way they know how: by force.

The actual game begins in a hub menu that is laid out in the form of The Wardens' hideout. You are a new recruit that is filling in for a recent loss of a tank driver. Turns out they've suffered a lot of losses lately, and it's your job to help take up the slack. You can talk to your tank's copilot, your resident engineer whom you'll be purchasing upgrades once your mission funds start rolling in, and your air support who also happens to control the game's music options. Your commanding officer awaits you in the briefing room, and will also commend or reprimand you for how well you performed in the last mission.

The missions themselves are very straightforward. Find an area where people aren't being helped, and give the resistance to that help a tour-de-force with your tank.

Upon entering a mission, you discover that the gameplay is basically Wolfenstein 3d with tank controls.

This fact is NOT a bad thing. The game actually becomes a very playable scenario rather than a programming mess if they had tried to program a tank simulation on what I suspect was a small budget. The Wolfenstein factor actually makes for a fast and effective experience, at the expense that the environments end up a little flat and the draw distance is a bit low (the Wolfenstein and DOOM engines didn't really have this problem).

The environments themselves range anywhere from open lands that make you feel exposed, to claustrophobic urban streets that make you HUD's radar your best friend to see around corners. Enemies consist of opposing tanks. There are three types of tanks that will try to destroy you outright, or keep you from completing a timed objective. APC tanks are the weakest kind. Armed only with machine guns, their range is poor and damage is minute. Forgetting about them can lead to a quick decline in much needed armor so don't underestimate them. Your standard medium tank fires the same kind of shells that you do, only slower on the reload and less accurate. They also actively hunt you after being aggro'd, more so than the APC's. Their AI is similar to enemies in DOOM where they always know where you are and will hunt you to the ends of the earth, so try not to get any more following you and get outnumbered. Getting mobbed generally leads to death unless you run and evade, don't stay and fight. I think this sort of mechanic is done on purpose because it make you feel like a real resistance fighter who's in the disadvantage.

These two tanks take exactly two shots of the main cannon to destroy. You can use your machine gun as well, but it's short range and inaccuracy makes it not worth the effort considering you have infinite ammo for both. There is a heavy tank that takes four or five shots to kill AND is faster than the mediums. They get more common in the later missions and are a serious threat.

However the game finds it easier to kill you with its more minor threats. Machine gun pillboxes are just about the most annoying enemy in the game. You can't aim your main cannon up or down so you can only hit these low profile targets with machine guns. Because your ranges are the same you'll have to take a few pings to kill them, which can be crucial in more challenging missions. You CAN hit them with the cannon by being just far enough that the decaying trajectory of your shot hits them, but it takes a while to line it up just right.

Helicopters are mobile and vertically inverted versions of the pillboxes, and like to attack you by flying right over you and firing down while you can't see to aim your machine gun at them. You can buy SAM missile hardpoint upgrades, but with the amount of helicopters being higher than the amount of SAMs you can carry, it becomes almost pointless. And don't EVER let helicopters gang up on you. I can guarantee it's gonna be a GAME OVER.

You only ever have one objective per map. They range from destroying all enemies, destroying designated buildings, or rescuing hostages. The only annoying missions I've discovered are the ones where you have to chase down enemy truck that move out of the battlefield over time. If even one leaves, you fail. They only take one hit to destroy, but you have to run a gauntlet of offensive foes just to reach them fast enough.

The flaws in this game are so minor in relation to the simplicity of this title that they are for the most part just minor peeves. The one I prominently notice it the lack of adjustable sensitivity on the turret's rotation speed. It'd be nice if it could move a little faster, though I find it more effective to just upgrade the tank's treads to turn the whole machine faster.

The upgrade system, no matter how helpful it is, always seems to be a fight between deciding what's going to be needed in the next level. There's no way to determine beforehand what you'll be up against, so you can either enter the stage and get as far as you can to learn what you need to complete it, or just wing it and hope for the best with the ones you chose. Also damage carries over to the next stage, so getting it repaired costs valuable upgrade funds. Trying to not get hit even once is a priority.

The audio is actually not bad, with the music being somewhat catchy hip hop beats, and the sound effects being distinguishable enough to use your ears to decide your strategy in some cases. The voice acting is also not terrible, though your teammates yelling repetitive messages about which way to go to get to the extraction point after completing the objective can be annoying.

And you really can't complain about the graphics considering what they developers had to work with. The PS1 version does have a blurring effect to mask draw distance, which the Saturn version doesn't. Either way, though, it does look primitive with it's sprite enemy tanks with polygonal buildings. Just like DOOM, really.

Overall, this game is worth playing around with sometimes, but it's in no way a fulfilling experience. For me, I have memories attached to this game as being one of those titles I used to play frequently, so maybe that makes me have a more positive outlook on the whole thing. Pretty much my entire Saturn collection does that for me. What can I say? It's an unusual machine indeed.