ShellShock Live Reviews

It's been YEARS of on and off game play, just one of those games that never dies off. Love it.

doesnt load me in, when booting up the game, gives me error

One of the best games in this type. Wonder if we will ever get ShellShock live 2. Slow progression is a key element in this game.

Game is down alllll the time past few days. Never known a game to be down so much, especially in daytime. Don't usually leave reviews, but we just want to play the game we paid for, let us. When it works it's good.

Very fun and simple 2-D game. SIngle player missions are creative and challenging

Reminds me of a tank flash game I used to play back in the day as a kid. But this game has way more options, weapons, mechanics, and customization. Also reminds me a bit of the WORMS series of games.

This game is simple but quite fun. My friends and I have been playing this game for years now on multiple platforms, and it's always a great time! Also good to play by yourself, but better with others. I have also met some long-time friends from this game!

500+ hours just to be "temporarily suspended" indefinitely with no reason or warning. KChamp support is the worst game support since he doesn't respond to anybody. Cannot support KChamp or any future games he releases until I get some help on getting my account back.

Was meant to try and get all achievements but there are so many tryhards on this game and yes me is salty but it only makes me to get better

The artillery genre is not one that is often explored outside of the ancient realm of Flash gaming seeing as ShellShock Live is, by all accounts, paying homage to precisely this style of old school gameplay from back in the day (Artillery Live, for those who remember) whilst also bringing in various new additions and adding a whole new arsenal of weaponry in an attempt to modernize the genre without all of the 'baggage' that comes with the modern live service games of today. Though to dive right into what's on offer here, ShellShock Live presents the player with both a singleplayer campaign to train your aiming and mastery of various weapons and online multiplayer to put those trained skills to the test against human players alongside various new mechanics that were not in the old titles, these including neon-pink barriers that reflect any and all projectiles that land on them and portals that shifts the shot's trajectory from one spot to an entirely different part of the map among others. I do appreciate that the singleplayer content gives people the chance to get used to the basic controls as well as work on their overall accuracy and rough estimates of how strong a shot should be to get where it needs to be, seeing as there are 80 missions spread across eight different chapters that progressively become harder in terms of the opposition that you're up against alongside various tricky shots that the game will require you to pull off in order to successfully pass a mission. On the note of this game's weapons, since the old classic Artillery games rarely strayed away from the vanilla plain cannonball-styled shot with it almost never affecting the landscape unlike here, ShellShock Live features an impressive arsenal of over 250 unique weapons for the player to use. These are gradually unlocked through levelling up as you gain experience alongside completing the singleplayer campaign and even using weapons enough time to gain access to more powerful versions (sometimes a straight-up bigger and hard-hitting version but other times changing how the weapon works to a certain degree whilst maintaining the specific firing style of that projectile) which will aid experienced players in the harder campaign missions alongside multiplayer itself. It is safe to say here that the online component is where the majority of one's time will be spent on this game, considering that the singleplayer campaign is just a 'gateway' of sorts, as there is a variety of game modes to choose from when playing against other people. This ranges from the typical free-for-all and team deathmatch types of matches that we're all likely accustomed with playing to more unusual variations. A couple of these include Juggernaut, which focuses on a 1v2-15 style of team play where the goal is for a group consisting of much weaker players to take on a much beefier and better-armed individual who is the 'Juggernaut' of the match, and Assassin, a nice spin on the usual free-for-all games whereby you aim to hit a specific target that the game points out as any weapons that hit non-targets deal no damage which puts much more emphasis on your current position depending on who your current target is and working out who has you as their target. No doubt it can be said that there is plenty for Artillery fans to explore and enjoy here, given that the graphics is something I find particularly special as kChamp Games' direction with aiming for simple flat 2D artstyle that the old Flash titles had but have it bursting with colourful neon-esque visuals adds a lot of character towards ShellShock Live's identity of Artillery games out there without necessarily aiming to be the 'best' simply by having ultra-realistic triple-A graphics, less details in some ways but focusing the effort in others to enhance the visuals in their own unique ways. So seeing as I have been largely praising this game thus far, let's mellow things out a little by talking about some of the negative points by first addressing the usual online-focused games and their problems with keeping the servers online, mainly by having some form of system dealing in microtransactions. Whilst ShellShock Live is far from being the worst culprit in this aspect, I do find that the grind for Cosmetic Points (a premium currency buyable with real-life money) is far too slow when you take into account how completing each of the three daily challenges tends to only award you around 10-12 CP per day whilst buying even the smallest and least cost-effective pack of $5 gives you 500 CP, which is equivalent to just $0.01 per CP. And although it is only cosmetics (mainly dogtags and minor visual adjustments to your tank alongside the colour/theme of the map itself) that CP is used with, there is another currency in the form of 'Gears' that can only be collected by spinning a wheel that triggers once a day after winning a match granting players the chance of winning prizes from just 1 Gear up to 100 or the more consistent but slower method of quickly clicking a gear when it rarely pops out of an enemy tank that you successfully hit. Since these are used to buy other cosmetics, serving a similar purpose to CP, but can also be used to buy in-game items that provide an advantage, whether this be a Jetpack that allows players trapped in a pit to fly outside of it when it wouldn't normally be possible to or a shield that deflects any shots for a turn, although at least this is balanced somewhat by having a rare chance of appearing in crates that appear on the map. Which leads me to another point that I wasn't sure on how to address, given that I do like that they aimed to add some variety to matches by the inclusion of random obstacles and bonuses that appear briefly (sometimes a full turn but other times only showing up for one or half of the players' turns) in order to give skilled players the incentive to switch up a lined-up shot with a different trajectory to deal extra damage or gain extra weapons during a match. However, based on my own personal experience, I've found that the obstacles tend to more often than not simply drag out a round of artillery gameplay and adds little to the overall experience, but at least this (alongside many other settings) can be adjusted or outright removed if this is not to your tastes. Finally I want to address the multiplayer as a whole, given that you likely won't be getting the full experience without playing the online part of it, as I did enjoy my time spent with playing on the different game modes. However whilst I can confidently say that you won't have to wait long for the basic 1v1 deathmatch games, anything outside of the smallest 2/3 player games will not likely be filled up outside of someone who either has a following on Discord/YouTube playing the game or just so happens to be lucky enough to have people stick around long enough for more people to join. Understandably the game's popularity will have dwindled in the five years since its initial May of 2020 release, though it is disappointing that I couldn't enjoy some of the bigger matches that likely would have been possible for the average player to host back then as it is possible to host up to 16 players at once on a single map, but good luck trying to reach that these days! Overall my thoughts on ShellShock Live are that, whilst it may not be nearly as active these days or be outright immune from some of the 'live service' trends of today, it is still a game that can prove to be fun in short burst as I've found that part of me did want to spend a lot more time on this before reviewing it but opted not to due to the nature of the gameplay itself alongside not wanting to burn myself out on it too quickly. Wait for a discount if you're not sure about trying out artillery games, but I can safely recommend for fans eager to give this tried-and-tested genre a shot!