If anyone can remember a little known shooter called Black when the Xbox was on its final lifeline, well your going to enjoy this one. The developers for Black are at it again but where that game had a serious tone of destruction, this one sees an upbeat approach. Bodycount is a FPS inspired by famous faces like Lady Gaga and JJ Abrams and yes we said Lady Gaga. We got a demonstration on how the game works then got a hands on for ourselves to see what it’s all about.
You start off as Jackson Delgado, an average guy that had been taken out of of his everyday life by an organization called the Network. They give him assignments but he secretly wants to know what’s going on with the Network and try to get his life back. Bodycount is basically laid out like a TV show and what we were playing was almost like the pilot to that. The build we played at E3 was about halfway in the development of the game so only the true foundation and core aspect to the game was shown. This was to get a sense of how you would be combating your enemies. The game is very reminiscent of Black, textures have a similar gloss to them, along with the overall movement. The level of destruction was there as well, but this time it was like having layers of destruction. When you shoot objects it will start to come apart piece by piece, which strategically can come in really handy.
There is a unique lean cover system which I found to my liking, the left trigger on the controller is to crouch and move slowly. When next to an object you will lean against it and as you start to ease off the trigger you expose yourself more and more. This seemed to work great especially since the usual first person shooter will just shift into third person on a cover system. Small little pieces of intel drop from enemies when you kill them, acting as currency in the game. It then can be used to upgrade weapons and for multiple forms of attack deployments during a stage.
We were told there would be co-op and multiplayer in the game and coincidentally we were in a stage that would be used for co-op. The story will take place before and after the events of the single player game, since the campaign focuses on just Jackson Delgado. What we also like was how the stages were laid out. They would be quite large and multiple missions will be at our disposal. This will allow us to tackle missions in any order we wanted to though out the level since it will not be a linear experience. Surprisingly though there is no lethal melee in the game, your character will just push an enemy at a distance. This was done intentional to always keep the action a distance.
Bodycount is shaping up great and is definitely on our watch list for next year. Everything from the cover system, the musical note played when running out of ammo, to the shear chaos and action like a television show has us wanting more. The game will be arriving sometime spring of 2011 and we can’t wait. We’ll be bringing you more info on the game as it comes in.
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