Written by: Ian

 

 

 

"Bodycount" has been marketed as the spiritual successor to the popular 2006 title, Black. However, after Stuart Black left the dev team last year, do the parts of Bodycount add up? A troubled development has obviously not stopped titles like LA Noire from becoming blockbuster hits, so I still had pretty high hopes from Codemasters.

 

 

The story for Bodycount is pretty weird. It tries to go for a near-futuristic plot about mega-corporations. You work for ‘the network’ whilst you’re up against ‘the target’. If the generic titles were supposed to be ironic, or actually appropriate, then either way, they fall pretty flat. The story is explained in various generic cut-scenes between missions, while various coloured lights and lines (that are blatantly ripped off from Perfect Dark) move around a blue mission map. There’s no tension or excitement to it, and when it all ended, I thought ‘is that it?!’- the anticlimax (despite there being no real climax) is pretty palpable.

 

 

 

Bodycount tries to strip away many of the elements that have so popularised shooters over the last few years. There are no iron sights, the pace is frenetic, and the objective is squarely placed on the shooting. However, that’s not to say the game doesn’t try and innovate. You get skill points for kills- in a similar way to Bulletstorm. Unfortunately, the system is less robust, and includes much more generic names. Killing enemies also drops ‘intel’, which are little Crackdown-esque orbs that fill up your power-up meter. You have four abilities- from temporary invincibility, to a pretty massive air-strike you can pull off. However, invincibility is pretty much the only one you’ll ever need.

 

Unfortunately the game has some major problems. Much of the game is about run-and-gun gameplay. However, LT is also used to lean, so half the time you end up leaning (stationary) than increasing your accuracy. The sprint is fast, but you can often run ahead of the dumb AI’s scripted patterns, throwing them off you and basically breaking the gameplay in some situations. The game is also tough, even on the lowest difficulty. However, this is mostly because the visual feedback you get about how much damage you have taken is unforgivably poor in comparison to games with a recoverable health system.

 

 

At least the game has pretty much the quickest reloads I’ve ever seen after you die- far better even than the CoD games; it’s basically instantaneous. However, the worst sin is the repetition of levels- this is not a game about bots, or multiplayer focused- so this is basically unforgivable laziness in a full-priced game. The 17 levels (remember, less maps, and others so generic they basically look the same as others) only take 3 hours to blast through, despite some pretty horrendous difficulty spikes too.