If you’re in your early 30’s like me and (mis)spent much of your youth in stinking indie/heavy metal nightclubs then the name of this game may have filled you with memories of Ice-T and his 90’s thrash metal/rap outfit. Alas, this game is unrelated. Body Count are not in the house. Bodycount, the game, is in fact a first person shooter from the team that brought us Black, one of the final AAA titles to come out the last generation of consoles.
It was hard to know what to expect from Bodycount; it seems that it was simply marketed as a balls out shooter and I guess that’s what it is. You will be shooting a great deal during the limited six hour campaign. The campaign unfolds in a pretty vague manner. You are a soldier working for The Network. You are fighting rebels and mysterious military types. Like I said it’s pretty vague. But this is not a story driven game and it’s not meant to be; the vagueness makes that clear. This is about shooting the fuck out of everything and everyone you see.
As you progress you’ll be introduced to the main gameplay concepts. These are the ‘Intel’ system and Bulletstorm style skill shots. Intel is gathered as orbs from fallen foes and fills the Intel meter. This can then be used up in exchange for boosts for your character, be it adrenalin to make you invincible, explosive rounds, enemy tracking, etc. The oddest thing here is calling these pickups ‘Intel’, I just can’t fathom why it would be called that. The skill shot system keeps track of any special kills, headshots, backstabs, etc. and tots up your total to issue you with a grade at the end of a level. As far was I could tell this grade does not affect gameplay, there is no reward for getting a high grade other than a place on a leaderboard. For a game following the likes of Bulletstorm, that’s just not enough.
You can see there was real promise here but it seems like every idea and concept was incomplete when it came time to ship the game. Being able to double tap the grenade button to have it explode on contact was a great idea. Some of the weapons are genuinely fun to use, and tearing through waves of enemies can be engaging, even if they just stand about waiting to be shot. The loading time for respawning is almost instant. That didn’t happen by mistake, it must have taken some amount of dedication, but these things just make the rest of the game seem unfinished or rushed. The graphics don’t pop up or tear but are mediocre. It’s fun to tear though enemies until you soon realise that they are as dumb as a post. Littering the levels with ammo and Intel orbs looks cool until you’re full and they just hang around in huge clumps looking odd.
Taken at face value Bodycount is a fairly enjoyable, but shallow, shooter. However, the feeling I was left with was confusion. Why is it called Intel? Why, when I have a knife, is shooting someone in the back called a ‘Back Stab’? Why must I throw out mines three at a time? Why are those guards running through multiple panes of glass to get to me? Level destruction works well, and ‘Shredding’ is a decent enough name for that system, but having someone say ‘You’ll need to shred through that wall’ just sounds ridiculous.
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