Bodycount

BODYCOUNT
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Publisher: Codemasters

Bodycount is an FPS.

I am tempted to make the above, and the legally-mandated italic paragraph way down at the end of this thing, my whole review. I won't, because it would be "clever" in the manner of things that seem like good ideas for five seconds and then bad ideas forever, but it's still appealing to apply the same principles to writing a review of Bodycount that the designers took to making the game itself. Bodycount is an FPS by the makers of Black, and it's an attempt to make a pure-strain First-Person Shooter Video Game, the iconic First-Person Shooter Video Game.

You play as an "Asset" of the "Network," going after the "Target," who has sparked a civil war between the Army and the Militia in some African country or other. All of these terms are capitalized in the game. I don't really want to talk about the plot, but it's demonstrative of what to expect elsewhere because the approach the designers took to it, that every element should be iconic to the point of capitalization, is the approach they've taken to every element of the rest of the game.

It's a First-Person Shooter Video Game. There are lots of enemies and you shoot them. Cover is destructible, which is a neat trick in doing what it feels like other FPS games should do. Appropriate to the Video Game elements, enemies, when killed, drop transparent neon sprites that drift towards you and make beep-boop noises as you pick them up—these are ammo and Intel, the latter of which powers the various abilities mapped to your D-pad, like temporary invincibility and explodobullets. None of that is plot-justified, it just happens because you're playing a video game. You carry two weapons at a time and cannot pick up weapons enemies drop; rather, you change your primary and secondary weapons at various weapon station things scattered around the levels. You never have to worry about running out of ammo because the ammo, like everything else about Bodycount, is generic.

I do not enjoy playing this game. This is the video game equivalent of eating food pills instead of food. Remember old science fiction that had future-people eating food pills? They seemed clever, I'm sure! But nobody wants to eat food that has been boiled down to the absolute iconic representation of "Ingested fuel," with all impractical superfluities removed, because what we actually enjoy about eating is the specific flavor and texture of individual food items. Bodycount, in striving to become the platonic ideal of the First-Person Shooter Video Game, has removed anything interesting or memorable that might make me want to play it instead of some other, specific FPS. Destructible cover is not enough.

This review is based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 version of Bodycount, provided for review purposes by Codemasters.