Body Cam is a game that has you playing as a police officer. Your perspective is from your body camera, hence the name of the game. The game can be played either as a single player experience or team based.
There are a few different game modes which include Team Death Match, Death Match, Training, and Body Bomb. Each mode has a series of maps you can play on with the exception of Training. Training lets you shoot targets at a shooting range, run an obstacle course with a course timer and lets you chat and hang out with other players, while the only map in Training mode is the training facility.
Team Death Match can have up to ten players, teams can be unbalanced, and first team to 10 wins. The interesting thing about this mode is that everyone has the same equipment, but that it changes each round. Death Match is similar to Team Death Match, with the difference being that there are up to 30 players per game and the equipment each player has to start with is the same, changing upon each death.
Bomb Body has the same team orientated gameplay as Team Death Match with the exception of one team having a bomb they have to defend with the opposite team trying to detonate it. The other difference between this mode and the others is that when you die, you become a drone that can assist the rest of your team in determining where the enemies are located.
The game features the use of in-game voice chat. This is both beneficial and a detriment, depending on how you look at it. If you choose to use your mic in Team Death Match or in Bomb Body, you can talk with your other team members and coordinate as needed to take down the other team. With Death Match, having voice chat can be a detriment as it will allow other players to get an idea of where you’re at depending on your proximity to them. I think the implementation of voice chat was a nice feature because it really adds to the sense of hyperrealism given you’re playing as a police officer and helps to put you in your character’s shoes.
Body Cam is said to be one of the most realistic first person shooters to ever come out. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it really puts all other shooters to shame in the graphics department. The game is hardly distinguishable from real life, aside from the fact you’re sitting in front of a computer using your mouse and keyboard.
The game is meant to mimic the real world and does a really amazing job at it. Walking through the woods, you brush against trees and other plants and the foliage kind of bends when you walk through it, much like it would if you were actually there. Walking through a snow covered industrial area or an abandoned house with all of the garbage, signage, and items strewn about really helps to bring a sense of eeriness to the already realistic nature of the game. When weapons are fired, you can see the smoke from the barrel and the holes from the ammo as they hit various surfaces.
My only real complaint with this game is that you’re playing the game through a fish-eye lens of a body cam. This really kind of skews your perspective and makes things just look off. Now I get the reason they did this and this isn’t a knock to the game, but I think it would have been better to make it more of a Rainbow Six approach to the game as opposed to using a body cam perspective. I think with the traditional FPS perspective and the hyperrealism, it would really stand out in a class of its own.
But then again, I think the reason they did it in this way to stand out amongst the other games in this genre and also as a means to not be too realistic in its execution.
The sounds are another area where the game really shines. You can hear the foliage crunch under your feet. Gravel and other surfaces you walk on have a real world sound to them. When you fire guns, they are very loud, much louder than that of other sounds around you. You can hear other people firing their guns off in the distance. This not only gives you a sense of realism, but also slight panic knowing that your enemy is close. Not only are the guns loud when fired compared to all other sounds, but the sounds the bullets make as they hit off of metal or other objects is just as satisfying to hear as the guns are to fire.
Performance wise, this game didn’t perform well on my PC at all, as I had to play it locked at 30 FPS and in a very small window for the game to be at any semblance of a playable state. Now that’s not to say it wasn’t a blast to play and didn’t perform well. I mean, it performed a lot better than I thought it would, and I’ve had a ton of fun playing it. If you have a PC from the last couple of years that has a dedicated graphics card, this game is going to perform very well, and you won’t be having to make the kinds of sacrifices I had to given, I am playing on a small form factor mini PC with an onboard graphics card.
Body Cam is a glimpse into what first person shooters can really become. We could start to see the blurriest line between a video game and reality we have ever seen in our lifetime. As terrifying as it might sound when you stop and think about it, it’s also very impressive. To think that we’ve come this close to mimicking reality in a video game is pretty wild. The problem with the hyperrealism of the game is that because of it, I don’t know that we will ever see a game that doesn’t have a fish-eye skewed perspective that Body Cam has. Even so, the fact that we have a game that looks and plays as well as this does, it’s a phenomenal experience and I would encourage any fan of first person shooters to give this game a shot.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
