E3 2011: Bodycount Hands-On Preview

It takes a brave developer (or a foolhardy one) to mess with the formula for a console first-person shooter control scheme. So familiar and ingrained is that formula, a developer better have a good reason to arrange its controls otherwise. Codemasters' Guildford Studio is one such brave or foolhardy outfit. Its good reason is the cover-lean mechanic in lively, arcadey shooter Bodycount.



With this mechanic, the left trigger plants you where you stand, rather than giving you the traditional view down the sights. Then, once you are locked in place, the right analog stick controls how you duck and weave on the spot. Instead of crouching or standing up with a button press, you twitch the stick up or down. Instead of full-on strafing left or right around the edge of cover, you move the stick left or right to lean either way.

The idea is that you plant yourself behind cover--say, a low wall--and use the cover-lean system to open up new lines of sight on the bad guys, letting you peek out from behind the wall rather than pop out from behind it. Though it takes time to get to grips with (and to shake the Call of Duty muscle memory), it feels like a neat idea successfully executed. It won't be to all tastes, but to the studio's credit, it doesn't feel like novelty for novelty's sake.

Andrew Wilson, who took up Stuart Black's mantle when he left Bodycount and Codemasters, is aware the unconventional mechanic is a gamble. But as the game's summer release date draws near, it's time for the studio to have the "courage of [its] convictions," as he puts it. And with "the best gun experience," says the game director, also up Bodycount's sleeve, he is quietly confident. Enough of quirky cover schemes, then. What makes a "best gun experience"?

"It's all about the effect the bullets have on the world around you," says Wilson, describing the shreddable cover that keeps you on your toes in the game's diverse environments. It's this exaggerated destructibility that smashes the chest-high wall you were hiding behind at an alarming rate, and that means many walls don't take a heavy weapon to demolish; a standard-issue assault rifle will do the trick. That's not to say explosives won't be readily available. Mines and grenades were plentiful in our hands-on. In a fun touch, grenades can be primed to explode on impact with a double tap of the right bumper--like having a grenade launcher permanently at your fingertips.

The game's story has the protagonist, an ex-army type, drafted into a private military agency known as The Network and, in his new gig, applying his lethal expertise in conflicts around the world. These are wholly fictional conflicts; in its mechanics and story alike, Bodycount has arcadey sensibilities and no designs on being a modern military sim.

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Looks like a mix of FPS and 3rd person shooter. I like the shredable cover idea.

I thought the same Gammer. I like the almost "cartoon-ish" look that some of the games have been taking here lately.