With some sort of crazy recipe that’s half a teaspoon of Apocalypse Now, two tablespoons of 28 Days Later and a wheelbarrow full of the original Shellshock by Guerilla, Rebellion took on development duties and seemed to have hit on an intriguing idea for an unconventional sequel to the `by the numbers` original. Mixing zombies and Vietnam together – what could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out, absolutely everything, because, when you see the shape of the finished game, the only logical conclusion one can draw is that the clever concept was stumbled upon by blind luck. Not since this generation of machines began has there been a game so half-baked, so utterly appalling in every aspect of its implementation that it's virtually impossible to pull any positives out of the ridiculously short time it lasts.

A First-Person Shooter, the game places the player in the regulation-issue army boots of Nathaniel `Nate` Walker. Nate’s brother has stumbled out of the Vietnamese jungle riddled with a highly infectious virus called 'Whiteknight'. Despite the complete confusion of the characters in the game, it’s quickly apparent to everyone else that Whiteknight turns its victims into blood-crazed zombies. Nate’s purpose is to track down his brother while various factions like the Vietcong and US Army want to get their hands on both him and Whiteknight. Incredibly, that little synopsis actually makes Blood Trail’s story sound far more interesting than it is because, in practice, it’s little more than a confusing mess.

This is because in order for the concept to work, the atmosphere would need to have been top notch. Except that's an insurmountable task when everything genuinely looks like a straight port of an Xbox or PS2 game. The graphics and textures are simply woeful, with the same character models used over and over again. Didn’t you just kill that guy? Yes you did, and you’ll kill him a hundred more times before the game reaches its conclusion; if you can stick it that far.

The fun doesn’t stop with the enemies, either, because the friendly GIs have even less variety. In next to no time you’ll have seen them all literally trotting around the map because for some reason the developers couldn’t animate them properly from the knees down – the result being something that looks like a dress rehearsal for an extended singsong of 'Knees Up Mother Brown'. Far worse than that is their disturbing attempt at modelling a woman – "attempt" being entirely the right word. The end result is something that looks like a transsexual crack-whore who’s saved up her meagre earnings to buy a pair of impressive knockers, leaving anyone playing it thoroughly confused. It speaks volumes that for the brief moments that this model is used it unintentionally manages to be more disturbing than the rest of the entire game.

Any gamer worth their salt knows that graphics aren’t the be all and end all but there’s no hope that Blood Trails has anything resembling decent gameplay underneath its ugly, ugly surface. Insipid level design means that the game will, mystically and for no apparent reason, strip you of your weapons at the start of each level. Lack of ideas means that you’ll be playing the same sort of general scenario in each level: shoot some enemies, get locked in to a confined area until you kill enough enemies, be saved by some friendly soldiers, soldiers die, repeat.

Marvel as enemies judder and slide towards you down embankments because they weren’t coded to traverse it in a natural fashion. Howl with laughter as the same unemotional person who voices the main character also voices one of the soldiers, making it sound like the main character is talking to himself. Cackle at some downright silly cut-scenes, like the helicopter pilot who manages to crash a helicopter... whilst stationary on the ground! Slap your thigh at the hilarity of your character sounding more than slightly camp when he takes damage. Scream with rage at the aiming which fidgets and twitches like a Gigantism sufferer tied up in a burlap sack. Rage as enemy bullets (and even sometimes enemies themselves) clip through the scenery from all angles and cut you to shreds. Let your blood boil with the dawning realisation that you’ve paid for something so shockingly poor that, on the hardest difficultly, even the AI for the friendly soldiers finds the game too much to take and just keels over.

We could go on like this because there’s literally complaint after complaint with Blood Trails and, even after much head scratching, it’s impossible to come up with anything positive to say. But it is good to see that Rebellion went the whole hog in making Shellshock 2: Blood Trails as thoroughly reprehensible and offensive to your sensibilities as was humanly possible. Although thankfully they stopped just short of not bothering to put the disc in the box and replacing it with a post-it note containing derogatory statements about your ability to father offspring and slanderous comments about your mothers free use of her reproductive organs.

Save yourself some money and at the same time see how a game is really put together, by downloading something off Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network or WiiWare. Even the poorest of titles there shows more promise than what’s on display here. It’s a recommendation for Rebellion, too, because it should go some way in teaching their staff the basics of how to make a game.

Oh wait, we’ve just thought of something positive about the game. The end credits has a short version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird playing over it and the developers had the sense not to crowbar in any cack-handed multiplayer!