Bodycount details surface from OXM

It was revealed earlier that the latest April 2010 issue of Official Xbox Magazine was set to exclusively reveal details regarding Codemasters upcoming FPS title, Bodycount. Whilst the magazine is due to go on sale on Thursday, subscribers have been receiving their issues in the post today allowing the first details regarding the anticipated title to surface.

The details revealed in the magazine are;

• One of the priorities during the games development is to make sure that the weaponry is the punchiest, most viscerally pleasing firearms encountered within similar titles.
• The game will include both single-player and online portions, with both competitive and co-op multiplayer modes being incorporated.
• The development team have banished the grey and brown colours seen within most ‘gritty’ titles, and have instead applied a Hollywood-esque colour grading to environments. This incorporates a greenish hue to the African area for example, which although isn’t necessarily realistic allows the game to have a more visually polished sheen.
• One of the main selling points for the title is that you can use weapons to literally shred your way through a building, forming your own entrances just by emptying a clip into a wall. This can also be implemented in a similar way to destroy any cover that enemies are hiding behind.
• You play as a mercenary for hire, that is most naturally suited for combat. You attract the attention of a secret organisation that will provides you with hte opportunity to head into a local warzone and take out people and facilities belonging/ connected to ‘Target’ – a faceless organisation that you will go up against.
• During the start of the game, at an Airport, you are injected and rendered unconscious. When you wake up, it’s because of the air rushing past your face as you’ve been dropped out of a plane above your target – luckily they provided you with a parachute though.
• You’ll be guided through missions by voice communications from three ’sexy female operatives’ who will each contact you at random. These are overseen by their boss, ‘Handler.’
• Alongside mission information, they will also feed you details of nearby weapon caches – providing you with a variety of weapons to use throughout the game to continually vary explosive and destructive capabilities available to you.
• There are three locations in the game, with Africa being the only one currently revealed.
• Destruction seems to be a key focus with Codemasters keen to demonstrate how crates can be destroyed piece by piece, panels fly off petrol pumps and walls will crumble into chunks.
• Whilst people will have seen similar physics within Red Faction: Guerilla, Bodycount’s demolition capabilities are far more precise with densely decorated locations allowing for more things to explode into pieces at any one time.
• Airborne support may be called in – such as Remote Drones or a Heavily armed Chopper – allowing for plenty of destructive opportunities.
• Players will be provided incentives for racking up kills, as if you kill numerous enemies in a row and you’ll start a chain – the more kills you make, the more intel you will be able to unlock. This will then provide access to new abilities, minigames and new asassination targets.
• An analogue first-person leaning system has been implemented, that will allow the player to peek around cover.
• One of the teams biggest challenges is the enemy AI alongside the destruction system. If you take away an enemies cover, they need to be able to adapt their tactics to ensure they don’t remain crouching behind a gaping hole.
• Finally, it has been reiterated that the game is still at very early stages.

For more details, to read the entire article and to catch your first glimpse at screenshots for the game, Issue 58 of the Official Xbox Magazine is set to go on sale this Thursday 11th March across all newsagents, priced at £5.99.