Bodycount was pitched as the spiritual successor to BLACK and geared towards big arcade style shooting action, loaded with destructible environments, skill shots and so on. Codemasters had been working on Bodycount for quite a while before creative lead Stewart Black had jumped ship and left the team to finish the title on their own. The question remains, can Bodycount live up to the expectations?
The short answer is no but Bodycount does get a few things right to make this game worth a look. While there are just too many aspects this first person shooter lacks, I still had fun playing through the game and enjoyed the arcade style action Bodycount provides.
My biggest gripes with the game are the lacking narrative and its simplistic, repetitive mission structure. Bodycount opens without much of a meaningful explanation as to who the player is, why he is really fighting in the midst of two nameless factions at war in West Africa and lackluster objectives.
I think, if Bodycount would have focused more on telling a decent story, I would have been much more engaged with the plot and cared about why I am actually running through the world. While players do get updates about what they need to be doing throughout, the game never really creates a deep enough story. Also, the mission objectives are probably some of the most repetitive I have experienced in the past few years. Each mission will have players run from way-point to way-point, killing countless enemies, just to flip a switch, kill a VIP or hack a terminal. In order for me to stay interested throughout a game, there simply needs to be more variety.
Most of the worse parts of Bodycount are found within the surrounding elements such as the story telling, mission structure and lacking characters, but the actual gameplay works pretty well. Codemasters got one thing right, the quick arcade-esque gunplay, placed in a rather open level design with countless, yet less intelligent, bad guys to kill. Bodycount doesn’t look exceptional in presentation but well enough to hang with what’s expected from shooters these days. There is also destructible cover, loads of red exploadable barrels (of course!) and some verticality to the game, which makes the gameplay rather enjoyable. Again, the AI is not going to put up too much of a challenge but serves as a decent punching bag for the player.
Even though the shooting is pretty satisfying, I would have liked much more variety in the weapons selection. A game manly based on its shooting mechanic would have benefited from something more than generic assault rifles, shotguns and pistols. Bodycount ranks players after each mission based on how many points were collected via ‘skill shots’. Skill shots are basically any kills that were caused by head-shots, environmental kills, etc. Running through levels blowing up exploding barrels, knocking people back with shotgun blasts and tossing grenades at a high pace, was where Bodycount showed its true colors.
Throughout the game players can upgrade special abilities like exploding bullets, armor, detecting enemies and air-strikes. Again, these features are neat ideas but don’t seem to make much of a difference, I ended up simply shooting everyone, over and over. A unique element that Bodycount does have though, is the ability to lean when pulling the left trigger to aim when standing. This can come in handy when faced with a large opposing force and requiring some protection. Players can also pick up glowing orbs from downed enemies which will replenish ammo, grenades and intel.
Bodycount features a multilayer and skill level mode but finding a match for some competitive action was hard to come by during the review period, and even if I managed to get into a game, the multiplayer just didn’t feel up to snuff with modern shooters like Black Ops and Bad Company 2. The skill shot challenge mode can be fun, if you really want to grind out high scores on campaign levels.
I am a little torn about scoring this game for one specific reason, the price. If Bodycount was sold at a budget price of 40 Dollars, it would fare quite a bit better because the value proposition at a full retail price of 60 bucks is just not there. The game has some unique features and fun gunplay but the lacking campaign and multiplayer offering just don’t allow this title to get a good score. While I can’t necessarily recommend Bodycount at full retail pricing, I will say this, shooting a bunch of running mad men in rather open level design, was quite a bit of fun.
Score: 6 / 10
Bodycount was developed and published by Codemasters for Xbox 360 and PS3 on August 30th. A copy of the game was provided to us by Codemasters for reviewing purposes.
