On the Xbox Live Arcade this week, EA and Criterion's 2006 title, Black has been reduced in price to 800 Microsoft Points. No doubt it's a price promotion by EA that's been strategically timed to hitch a ride with Codemasters' ramping-up of publicity for Bodycount, which is currently as ramped-up as it gets with the game preparing for launch at the start of next month. Both games share much of the same DNA, not only through a number of developers on Codemasters' Guildford-based team but in the game's overall design as well. Once again, the focus is on guns and destruction; on using destructible environments as a vehicle for gameplay. It was a highly innovative approach to FPS design in 2006 and, actually, it remains relatively underused in current-gen shooters today.
Some games have utilised destructible cover and limited environmental destruction in recent years, but mostly as an added peripheral feature rather than a gameplay 'pillar'. Where titles have gone balls-out with the destruction (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Red Faction: Guerilla), they've come across more as showy tech-demos than refined examples of game design. It's fair to say that DICE is one studio that's really nailed destructible environments with its Battlefield games and the proprietary Frostbite tech powering them, although we're struggling to think of another developer with such a skilled hand in this area. Perhaps, then, Bodycount bolts from its shaky foundations almost as refreshingly as Black did over five years ago. The space for innovation in this area remains and the market is just as primed to accept it.
But there are some added teeth in the jaws of Bodycount's gameplay – it is, in many ways, Black Mark II. A system of scored combos and power-ups places it firmly into Bulletstorm's territory, leaving us to wonder whether it's a coincidence that all of these game titles start with the letter B (our instinct tells us no). Much like People Can Fly's refreshing shooter, Bodycount rewards you for killing people in ever more creative ways: end somebody with a headshot and you'll get a x1 multiplier; melee kill them from behind, or shoot them with your dying breath/the final bullet in your magazine, on the other hand, and you'll ratchet-up that multiplier even further. Although not quite as wide-ranging as the Bulletstorm equivalent 'Skillshots', these varieties of kill do at least encourage you to experiment a bit. It all correlates to a Bodycount score that's tallied up at the end of each level, leaving you with a graded score from A-E that takes additional factors into account, such as how many of the destructible or explosive set-pieces you took advantage of.
Different types of kills also effect the amount of 'Intel' that spews from the bodies of enemies as you dispatch them. Blue Intel comes from regular kills, yellow from 'skill-kills', and red from chained kills. This Intel is effectively the game's curren
cy – think of it like XP. As you progress in the campaign and collect more Intel, you'll open up the option to use various support actions which start with a timed period of invincibility and move up the tiers through explosive ammo, radar augmentations and, at the top-end of the scale, an airstrike. Roughly comparable to Call of Duty's perks, these abilities were consistent throughout the three levels of single-player and the Horde-style co-op mode we sampled. Although not quite as cathartic and rewarding as their CoD counterparts, they do at least offer an incentive to play the game as intended, with as much fiery destruction and explosive gumption as possible. But it's perhaps this destructible element of the game that underwhelmed us the most in what was, admittedly, a more broad than comprehensive sit-down with the code.
For the sections we played through, most of the game environments' destructibility just seemed so... predictable [prestructable? ed.]. There were red oil barrels, outposts constructed out of wood, glass partitions, and the occasional hut that all said, 'Shoot me and I will fall apart/explode'. It was the same setup with Black in 2006, where abundantly clear signposting informed the gamer: 'Rigged set-piece of destruction here'. Unlike with DICE's Frostbite engine though, we rarely came across a level section that deconstructed in a way we weren't expecting, or made us stand back and marvel at the levels of destruction on show. We'd hoped for a step-up in the design from what Black offered five years ago, but instead what we found were very similar blueprints and ideas buoyed by more advanced technology (e.g. materials that break apart convincingly, smoother physics, and more detailed textures). It just didn't feel that creative for a gameplay dynamic that's rife with possibilities and crying out for more innovative thinking.
All of that said, we did only sample three missions from a total of 18 in the full game, so there's clearly a lot more content in stock that could prove our initial concerns wrong. Codemasters Guildford's Horde-style co-op mode also brings a lot to the table, taking sections from the campaign and using them as maps that you and a co-op partner have to defend from waves of enemies. Defeated waves result in more advanced weaponry and a higher Bodycount score, which can then be posted to online leaderboards for bragging rights. And there's a competitive multiplayer component in the full game too: although limited to deathmatch and team deathmatch modes for 12 players, the prospect of adding human opponents to these destructible environments is a promising one.
Our initial impressions of Bodycount are that it's not quite what we'd hoped it would be. Beyond a staid feel to some of the destructible environments' design, even the gunpla
y wasn't quite as raucous and off-the-hook as what we'd anticipated given the Black lineage - other than a clever little cover system (half a press of the left-trigger peers down the barrel; a full press prompts an almost skittle-like 'lean' out of cover), Bodycount's core-combat felt a touch on the generic side. There really is a lot more to see of the game though, so we're reserving judgement for now and hoping for the best come review.
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