Exclusive Bodycount shots

If you've got a huge team working on a game, what you probably don't want is everyone focusing on one member of the group as though he's solely responsible. Not great for team morale.

Imagine how much worse it would be then, if that person had left the company a year ago, yet he was still what everyone who wrote about the game talked about.

That's exactly the situation with Bodycount. Stuart Black left ages ago, yet nearly every story you read about the game starts by mentioning him. Including this one. Sorry about that.

But it's impossible not to mention him, given most of the team worked with him on his last project - a rather excellent first person shooter released just before the death rattle of the PS2. And it doesn't help that the game was named, in an egomania-gone-mad kind of way, Black. Fifa 12 isn't named Rutter 12, is it?

But what of Bodycount? The game this piece is supposedly about? Well, we saw it in LA a couple of weeks back (we went to E3 in Los Angeles you know, did we mention it?) and it's shaping up nicely, mixing old school arcade thrills and innovation to produce something nicely unique.

Not totally unique you understand. It's not told from the bullet's point of view or anything - it's still a first person shooter. But it plays differently enough from Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 to appeal to people looking for something a touch different, while still wanting to see heads explode in a puff of pink plasma.

First off is the idea that chaining together kills or nailing headshots gets you more XP - pulling off impressive moves allows you to unlock air strikes or ammo upgrades to increase the mayhem you can wreak.

And what mayhem. Destructible scenery we've seen - certain buildings will collapse in pre-ordained ways if you shoot them enough. In Bodycount, if you can see it, your bullets can shred it. Which means you're never safe, but then neither are your enemies.

So, just in case you thought first person shooters were getting a little worthy (or uncomfortably close to real life), Bodycount is here to prove to you there is another way. It's the over-the-top Eighties action movie way. And Bodycount nails it.

Bodycount is out on Xbox 360 and PS3 in August