Operation Body Count

From Wolfsource

Operation Body Count is a 1994 first-person shooter that used the Wolfenstein 3D ray casting engine. It was developed and published by Capstone Software.

Contents 1 Story 2 Gameplay 3 Features 4 Controversy

Story

Terrorists have taken over the UN Tower's and have seized the government officials in them. They are now being held as hostages On the top floor of one of the tower's by Victor Baloch, the leader of the terrorist gang.

As a member of a special Government Elite Force, it is up to the player to travel through the sewer's under the towers, meet up with thier team in the maintence area of one of them and work their way to the top floor.

Once the team reach the top of the first tower, they find out that both thier goals are in the other tower. The player alone proceeds to enter the second tower with assistence from an exploison and must fight there way to it's top floor where the hostages and Victor are.

Gameplay

Using a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine, gameplay is very similar to the majority of other "clones" of the time. The game consisted of 40 levels. The first few levels are set in the sewers, where you attempt to make your way up to the basement of one of the towers. During these levels, you mainly combat giant rats, as well as sewer monsters.

The player then battles through each floor of both towers and at the top of the second tower comes face-to-face with Victor himself who isn't going to go down without a fight.

Features

There were several features in this game which attempted to rise it above similar games on the market at the time, such as:

• The player can activate a proximity map, which appears in the corner of the screen, and does not "freeze" the game world to obstruct gameplay.
• The terrorists have set booby traps for the player, such as mines, which are often hidden under corpses or sometimes in plain sight.
• When the player character gets out of the sewers and into the UNN building, they can then command team mates to help in killing the terrorists for that floor.
• Many floors in the UNN building have windows and balconies showing simulated views of the city outside. Shooting these windows would result in the glass breaking.
• Levels are completed by finding an elevator or stairs, which is often the same one you use to enter the level in the first place. Capstone's other major release, Corridor 7, had a similar feature.
• Although none of the levels featured dynamic lighting, you could turn the lights for the entire floor on or off when you find the generator switch for that level. Doing so also alerts all the enemies on the floor to your presence.
• All floors and ceilings are fully textured unlike Wolf 3D, which had neither.

Despite these factors, Operation Body Count was largely ignored due to other games such as Doom overshadowing it. In addition, the gameplay was often criticized for being choppy and repetitive, with very blocky 2D sprites which animated quite poorly compared to other games of the time.

Controversy

On January 31, 1996, Operation Body Count was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS (now BPjM). It was just indexed, but not confiscated. It's illegal to advertise the game or to make it available to people under the age of 18.