Operation: Body Count (1994)
Developer: Capstone Software
Genre: First Person Shooter
dos games archive
First Impressions
Operation: Body Count very quickly appears to be a cheap clone, using the wolf3d engine.
First up is this badly thought out menu, with 10 options, sorted into groups rather than sub-menus, and start game being the 5th option down. Admittedly it is separated from the rest and is in the center of the screen, which does help it get noticed.
Then you are greeted with this screen. Numbers without names, indistinct and noisy textures and a badly-scaled weapons taking up a good portion of the center of your vision. Luckily the important ones HEALTH and AMMO are pretty intuitive.The starting area is filled with rats to shoot, a sadly missed staple enemy of yesteryear. The complex structure of this area hinders the controls very much, which makes getting around a little frustrating. A lot of this was compensated for in Wolfenstein's level design, but was probably not considered in this game.
The designers did think to develop this handy little minimap, though! [According to Legend: ID didn't make a map for wolf3d because Swastikas played a big part in their level designs!]
VERY interestingly, the game featured AI allies! Appearing to be able to give them commands such as FOLLOW and ATTACK, it's definitely a new twist for this old engine, but I'll reserve judgement on how Actually Useful it is until I've played it.
This part in the video annoyed me, forcing the player to a dead end and using a secret wall to progress.
Friggin Doom sprite recolour.
also they seriously had a guy sitting on the toilet. ticking all the boxes here.
It seems most of the graphics are photographic, which is a bad idea at such a low resolution, being so very noisy. Also the video descriptions says that the first SEVEN levels are sewer levels, which doesn't strike me as a good thing to do.
However, you can look past the many many faults and spot a few interesting parts. The AI allies were a cool idea, and the minimap was pretty much a necessity. Considering this came out the year after Doom, though, it really is lacking a lot. (like fun)
You can thank these people
