Few games embraced the destructive power of guns the way Black did. Developed by Criterion Games (creators of the Burnout series) and published by Electronic Arts for the Playstation 2 and Xbox, Black took your everyday first-person shooter and glazed it with exaggerated physics, ridiculously powerful guns and great sound design in an attempt to do for shooters what Burnout did for racing games. It partly succeeded, gathering a cult following, and now, a large chunk of its development team has made Bodycount — a game that is meant to be Black's spiritual successor. Codemasters take up publishing duties this time around — a strange pairing considering their affinity for military simulations such as Operation Flashpoint. So does Bodycount shred its way to the top of the FPS food chain? Or is it just another shooter that ought not to have been made?
Let's get this out of the way first: Bodycount has a few things going for it. The weapons feel weighty and pack a mean punch, while the shooting can be quite satisfying at times. ‘Shredding' cover is fun, with the skill-shot system (while not polished) complementing it on occasion. Bodycount also supplies you with a significant amount of cannon fodder in the form of dumb enemies who love taking cover behind explosive barrels, and what are arguably walls made entirely out of paper. The game also features one semi-interesting boss fight. Each of the game's positives, unfortunately, comes with a downside. Weapons, for instance, cannot be picked up from dead enemies, so you're left with the same guns for a large portion of the game — unless you're able to find one of the load-out terminals (which are scarce as well). The gun selection itself isn't very impressive and the game's handling of some of the more fun guns to shoot (like the shotgun, for instance) is poor. While you would expect to cause serious damage with a couple of rounds from the Super90 semi-automatic shotgun, it does surprisingly little harm to enemies (the tougher ones take 2-3 rounds at point blank range to go down) as well as cover. Speaking of which, the game features a ‘loose' cover mechanic, but use it, and you're glued to a spot of your choosing (you can't move while zooming in with your weapon either), occasionally peaking out to get some rounds away.
Bodycount's story is pretty nonsensical but it's there for a couple of reasons. First, it's a vague attempt to justify all the killing that you're about to do, and second, by setting the game in Africa, the developers can thrust one drab environment after another at you... repeatedly. The bland and repetitive gameplay is complemented by even blander, repetitive levels — not in the sense that the levels look similar, but in the way that several of the game's missions are set in exactly the same environments. The graphics engine doesn't help Bodycount's cause either, neither does the audio. The game looks ancient — almost as if Black's graphic engine was recycled, with the textures being rendered in a slightly higher resolution, and while the guns sound like guns, other sound effects sound terribly out of place, and there's the oddest selection of music, which is a combination of an absurd, incongruous orchestral score and electronica.
Since the game's release, Codemasters has shut down its Guildford Studio, the studio that was responsible for Bodycount to focus on its racing franchises. A wise move since it is hardly flagship FPS material. The core shooting can be fun at times, but there's just nothing here that we haven't seen before. Bodycount is available for the X360 and PS3.
