Previews// Bodycount

It’s strange that one of the most talked-about first-person shooters of the year has had little exposure in the media. Loudly paraded by Codemasters last year as Stuart Black’s latest brainchild, details on Bodycount quickly dried up and the publisher has been quiet about the game ever since. Until today, that is.

Having played the co-operative mode for a solid afternoon, I can say that the silence wasn’t the result of any uncertainties with the code. It’s exactly what it says on the tin - a fast-paced, frenetic arcade shooter in which the big draw is in racking up as high a score as possible. Your score, incidentally, is tied to the count of bodies you gun down.

Pretty simple stuff - even more so when you consider the co-operative side of Bodycount could be summed up as a ‘first-person Horde mode.’ The complications arrive in the game’s big selling point - destructive scenery. According to the press release I have here, it’s suggested that almost anything and everything can be blown to bits (within reason).

While that’s not strictly true, the environmental damage engine is competent enough for you to blast holes in certain walls if your weapon is powerful enough. This allows you to fire from makeshift cover - until your enemy gets a better weapon and blows a bigger hole so that he can shoot you back.

At the very least, crates and small walls in open spaces are prime for pure demolition if you’re not careful. The co-op level I played was set in a South African compound littered with barrels, boxes and buildings lined with corrugated metal slats. As each wave comes around you get to enjoy a range of different enemies - heavy machine gunners, pyro-maniac suicide bombers and suited-up agency soldiers assist the legions of other cannon fodder that aim to shoot you in the face.

As you kill crazies, strange looking tokens come spitting out of their corpses. Building up a collection of these tokens allows you to gain access to a bunch of different perks on your Operative Support Button (OSB). Rack up a combo by cleanly fragging enemies one after the other, and the fallen spunk even more out of their bodies. Regular tokens will work as cash to pay for weapons upgrades after a certain number of rounds, while different-coloured coins represent a selection of power-ups that can be activated at any time.

These perks are mapped to the directional pad, and light up when you have enough coinage to pay for its use. They range from simple adrenaline boosters for when you’re in a pinch, to a more comprehensive radar system, hardened bullets and (my favourite) air strikes on a bunch of bad guys. All of these are upgradeable as well, so level those babies up and things get even more ridiculous.

While the destruction is all well and good, one of the key features of Bodycount for me has to be the innovations in the cover system. Yes, yes, focusing on a cover system sounds like I live in basements, but work with me here. Rather than a usual Gears of War-style, stick-to-the-wall system, this game makes ample use of the Left Trigger for strafing and camping. Hold the trigger halfway down, and you zoom in with the ability to move around.

Squeeze the trigger fully and you sit in position, moving your head around corners and cover using the left analogue stick. It takes a lot of getting used to, but after a while it almost eliminates the need to click the right thumbstick for an actual crouch move. Just pull the trigger down fully, hold down on the left stick, and you’re kneeling behind a low wall. It adds to the whole fast-paced nature of the game, allowing you to make split-second twitch manouevres to avoid gunfire.

Bodycount is looking like, if nothing else, a solid arcade-style shooter when played with friends. No doubt we’ll be wanting to play more of this when it launches in September.

See our interview with Bodycount's Max Cant right here.