Why is my tank shooting cats?!?
Type: Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Genre: Strategy
Developer: kChamp Games
Publisher: kChamp Games
Release Date: 22 May, 2020
Overview
Shellshock Live is an online artillery game filled with “way too many weapons”, “loads of modes” and well… ruined friendships. Offering both the possibility of blowing up tanks in singleplayer and multiplayer, the game is a real bang for your buck, especially considering all its content.
Lining up the Targets
Shellshock Live is built upon a gameplay concept that has seen many iterations in many years: choose the bullet trajectory, choose the strength of the launch and… shoot. Missing means having to adjust your aim, while hitting usually mean that your target moves and you’ll have to adjust your aim anyway. On this regard, Shellshock picks up the formula and, instead of changing it, makes it as complete as possible.
Weapons, for example, are the usual ones seen in similar games, like rolling shots, 3-way shots and so on… but Shellshock adds its own lot of weapons, so we can find ourself shooting cats, fish bowls and a whole package of strange projectiles we’ve never even thought of. Understanding what a new projectile does before even shooting it is often impossible, but discovering new weapons to tear down your opponents is part of the game’s charm.
Justice Rains from above!
Shellshock Live offers both online matches, offline skirmishes and a number of singleplayer missions that act more like a big tutorial. Skirmishes are deeply customizable, both online and offline, offering many modifiers, game modes and the possibility to adjust the difficulty of the game’s bots. An interesting touch is given by the possibility to active certain modifiers, which add special events to the match: portals for bullets to go through, barriers, drones, health pickups…
Depending on the number of players and the chosen game mode, matches can get really messy, especially on more convoluted maps with the special “events” detailed above. Luck can play a big role in this type of matches, but more balanced one can be set up by reducing the number of tanks, choosing appropriate maps and eventually removing portals, shields and such.
I’ll Build a Mountain of My Own
Like similar games, most projectiles in the game explode, leading to the creation of smaller or bigger craters. These can create interesting situations for a tactical point of view: standing in craters means being protected by direct shots, but more vulnerable to rolling shots or grenades. The opposite happens while being on hills: direct shots are more of a threat, but rolling ones tend to be less dangerous.
Perfect positions don’t last forever though: every 10 turns the terrain collapses, making the map flatter and changing the positions of the players: this is particularly useful for those stuck in big craters and forces players to re-focus the aim on the new position of their targets.
Verdict
There’s not a lot more to say about Shellshock: this is the result of various improvements made in years to the genre, which result in not only a complete game, but one with tons of content, maps, game modes and, most importantly, a lot of incredibly strange weapons that you’ll have no idea on how they work.
