On With The Bodycount

Black. I feel like my own opinion of Criterion's first-person shooter have been well-established... well, provided you listen to the podcast, anyway. It's weird to me that Codemasters is really pushing its new first-person shooter, Bodycount, as being from the "co-creator and designer of Black," Stuart Black. Black (the game) didn't exactly go on to leave an especially lasting impact on shooters. Heck, I'd expect that a decent number of people don't even remember it at all. But I digress.

Today, Codemasters released two screenshots of the game, which... uh... look a lot like Black to me. Sadly, there's no mention of this being "gunporn 2.0" and I haven't seen anything close to "bullets are our babies" in the released material. That said, the provided quotes say the exact right things that I want to see when someone says they're making a first-person shooter. Here's one from the game's executive producer, Tom Gillo:

“Our core focus for Bodycount is to deliver best-in-class gun play that places the gamer at the heart of the experience,” said Executive Producer Tom Gillo. “From the jaw-dropping devastation caused by firing into enemies or shredding the world around you in a hail of bullets, Bodycount will crystalize that moment of pulling the trigger into an exhilarating sensory overload of action.”

Firing guns into enemy targets should feel positively devastating. Firing a gun should feel like an intensely destructive act. That's one of the things that Black came closest to delivering on, but the constant inclusion of exploding barrels made it all feel like a photo hunt game. "Find the exploding barrel, shoot it, and move forward!"

Of course, that all sounds a bit more harsh than it should. Black was actually a really neat game, in spots. It just felt like it was being held back somehow, like the design of the levels and environments didn't quite mesh with the firearms well enough.

If there's anything that signifies that this game is coming from dudes who worked on Black, it's this Stuart Black quote:

"If Race Driver: GRID was all about the purity of racing, then everything in Bodycount is absolutely centered on the bullet and its impact on the world."

Yep. That sounds about right. The game is currently set for release in Q1 2011 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.