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Bodycount Review

Posted on 14. Sep, 2011 by Freak_c in Games, News, Reviews

There is only so much shooting I can take and I’m an avid first person shooter fan. It’s always a lot of fun to mow down tons of enemies with your gun, it makes you feel like the ultimate bad ass, Who’s this Rambo guy anyway? Bodycount knows what it is and doesn’t try to hide it with other gameplay mechanics. Right from the get go, Bodycount slaps you in the face and says, “Get ready to shoot a lot of dudes, change weapons and shoot some more guys.” There is only so much one can bare with repetition in this day of the modern shooter.
There isn’t much of a story in Bodycount, but you play as an operative of the Network, your sole existence is to solve problems that governments can’t. Your character is a robot or not, you never know because you never speak or see yourself, but I’m going with robot because you can take a lot of damage. There’s a war that has broken out in Western Africa and in the East and along the way, you uncover that a rival corporation known as the Target is behind it all.

As I said there’s not much to the story. So does the gameplay make up for it, unfortunately not really. Bodycount boosts complete destructible environments, if an enemy hides behind some cover behind some wooden piles or a metal sheet you can shoot at him through it and take him down. Many of the levels are designed so that all the shoot outs take place in an area with a lot to destroy. This is really shown off while playing the levels which take place in the cold and glass areas of the Targets ship. There is glass everywhere which only leads to pieces of glass everywhere. However I did across some areas of the world where even the skimpiest little bit of cover was penetrable by my bullets.

For a first person shooter the game has some of the strangest controls ever! Some that you will really have to learn and there is no way to change them. The strangest key combination is that the zoom in and lean key are the same key. Stranger yet is that when you lean you become routed to the spot and cannot move. Now because this is the trigger L2 key you have pull it only halfway to zoom and then full to lean. This can cause some serious frustration at first but then you get use to it and realize that you don’t have to zoom anyway. The zoom is only half zoom as well and you don’t actually look down the sights of the gun.

If the single player campaign doesn’t do it for you then at least there is multiplayer and co-op. Multiplayer only has a few options for you and isn’t that strong either, while playing there were certain things missing which have become standard with online shooters these days. For instance, there are no hit markers when you make a connection with someone and not to mention that I did battle to find a game some times. The co-op on the other hand was surprisingly fun, it’s a two player survival type mission were around 20 waves of enemies. It fun because you start to lose your cover and the maps seems to get smaller during the session.

Conclusion
Bodycount is a quick strange simple sci-fi shooter that offers a short single player campaign, competitive online multiplayer and co-op online. No real engrossing story to flow and weak multiplayer, basic graphics odd sounds but the co-op and game does become fun. This is a game to fill those short gaps between the larger game release.

6/10

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