First-person shooters are like pubs. There are plenty of them around, they all offer something slightly different and we all have our favourites. Bodycount is the latest FPS to hit our consoles and this one’s less about realism and more about point scoring. You play as a faceless operative for a company called The Network as you’re dropped behind enemy lines in third world countries to put a stop to all the fighting or satisfy your own agendas. Early on you soon realise there’s also a mysterious futuristic force called The Target also involved wherever you go so you not only have to assassinate normal dictators but also take on these adversaries which are a lot more high-tech.
The main way you’re encouraged to play is by getting combos for performing skillshots. These can be achieved with headshots, grenade frags, shooting a barrel nearby, shooting someone in the back and so on. These give you points which go towards your grade at the end of the mission and also determine how much stuff they drop when they die. They shower down like confetti and give you more points for some special skills you have and also more ammo and grenades. With a direction on the d-pad you can ping the location of enemies, become invulnerable and even call in air strikes. Unfortunately they don’t really feel integral to the game and many times I forgot I even had them! Shooting also feels functional but it’s just not as fun as killing with skill in Bulletstorm or as visceral as Crysis 2.
Enemies aren’t also the brightest you’ll encounter. They mostly march towards you accepting all the gunfire or stand out in the open waiting for a shotgun in the face. There are multiplayer modes as well but at the time of review the servers weren’t well populated so it’s tricky for me to comment on those.
There’s nothing particularly broken about Bodycount but it didn’t really grip me either. With no face to put to your character and no real story apart from a disembodied female voice telling you what to do I just couldn’t get into it. Therefore the shooting had to be exceptional and it’s only just above average. So, to be fair, Bodycount gets an above average score of 6 out of 10.
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Related: Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Bodycount review on Youtube
