After all the screenshots, developer diaries, and trailers we've seen for Bodycount throughout the years--or, year...whichever--the game is finally releasing at the end of the month, with a demo newly released on the Xbox 360. After treading and shredding through its short presentation of what's to come, I must admit that I am both interested yet, a tad perplexed.
As you may or may not know, the story in Bodycount is...there. There's you, there's bad guys, there's more bad guys, and then there's a head honcho bad guy, all of whom are aiming to kill you before you kill them. That's roughly the grand scope of the story, with the mission in the demo sending you to Africa to take out bad guys led by a bigger bad guy holding a mini-gun. It's more or less "Summer Blockbuster Film 101," but in some cases, like here, it works.
From day one, Bodycount was advertised as a balls-to-the-walls first-person shooter filled with nothing but high-stakes action. There's definitely a lot of action to take in here, with walls breaking and sparks flying as you shoot anything and everything in site trudging from Point A to Point B. There's no short supply of exploding red barrels either, ensuring every enemy can die from red shrapnel.
However, the game's destruction element is a bit of a letdown. Shredding through an environment was one of the bulletpoints repeated in every video and interview for Bodycount, sadly, there's not much to back it up. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the Frostbite engine, but the destruction is really only limited to the aforementioned wall tearing down, though, even shooting point blank at a wooden wall with a shotgun takes time to make a dent, and this is a freakin' shanty town!
Most of the huge shredding scenarios on offer are often set-piece moments where you're told, "you need to shred through that wall to get through," or, "snipers up top!" At this point, you either shoot repeatedly at a wall or the red barrels behing said sniper. Ultimately, Bodycount does not provide the free-form destruction that I was hoping.
Trudging is a great word to describe the movement in Bodycount, because there is a certain "heaviness" attached to your character and his movements. When playing Bodycount and knowing that it's an arcade shooter, my initial instinct was that I would be able to fly by enemies at a brisk pace annihilating everyone of them. What I got, though, was the slap in the face of having to take my time with each encounter, and possibly even take cover before dealing with a group of enemies. The "heaviness" is very reminiscent to Killzone 2, which, to me doesn't seem like it fits the overall arch Bodycount was going for.
Another contribution to the whole cumbersome feeling I'm talking about is with Bodycount's aiming system. There's no aim-down-sight system to speak of here, and pressing the left trigger only zooms in the camera and has your character cemented to the floor, only able to peek left and right. You can't move in this position whatsoever, that is, unless you half-press the trigger, making aiming on-the-go more of an annoyance than an asset.
However, the peek-and-lean cover system on offer does work extremely well, if not confuse the hell out of me even more. In an arcade shooter, my last thought is where I should find cover next. Rather, I am thinking about how I am going to quickly flank a squad of tangos, or how awesome it will be to run up in some guy's face and give him a close encounter with my Spas. Here I'm thinking games like Left 4 Dead, Bulletstorm, and even Mercenaries. Oddly, this isn't how I found myself playing Bodycount.
In the end, though, none of this may matter. Bodycount looks pretty when things go boom, the guns feel responsive, and it just feels good pulling that trigger. As I've touched on throughout this post, my one complaint with the game is that it feels torn between two identities, and that it needs some adjustment to really feel like an arcade shooter. Still, Bodycount has kept my interest. I'm going to play the demo again, and again, and maybe even one more time after. If that's any indication, Bodycount will offer an exciting campaign, and its color palette--which actually includes color--and non-militaristic angle will really work in the game's favor.
Bodycount will release on August 30 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
