Bodycount: Black 2 in all but name?

Update (09 March, 2010): According to a recent interview on GameSpot, Stuart Black has revealed that Black 2 was indeed in development (as we mentioned in this story) and many of the team working on it moved on to work on Bodycount.

"I certainly did some preliminary pre-production work on Black 2, once we finished Black, the first three or four months. I moved on quite quickly after that," he said.

"A lot of the guys on the team I'm working with here now carried on with that and did a lot of pre-production for about a year or so on Black 2, before that kind of bit the dust."

Not so much a 'told you so' and more a, 'thankgod we didn't say something that turned out to be bollocks'.

Original story:

Already hinted at in a post on OXM's official website on Friday, Bodycount is a brand new FPS from Codemasters - announced this week in Official Xbox Magazine UK.

It's in development at Codemasters' Guildford studio and led by Stuart Black, who also worked on Black while at EA Criterion. No, that's not a typo.

You play as a mercenary employed to head into war zones and take out people and facilities connected to an organisation known cryptically as 'Target'.

The location seen in this first look at the game is in Africa - a very bright green Africa.This is because Bodycount isadopting a brighter, stylisedcolour palette in place of the greys and browns of many contemporary FPSs. Here, colour will be lurid and 'Hollywood'. Good. We’re starting to hate brown games.

The dev team's other keyfocuses mentioned in the magazine's featureare in creating powerful, tactile weaponry and impressive destructible environments.

Above: Official Xbox Magazine UK's latest issue has the world exclusive first look at Bodycount

If you ask us, this sounds like Black 2 in all but name - which is no bad thing - the features and ambitions announced so far are resoundingly similar to that of the PS2/Xbox shooter.

If you need your memory jogged, the original split the opinion of many gamers when it was released due to lack of multiplayer and a weak storyline, despite high-quality visuals and hyper-realistic guns.

No next-gen sequel has ever surfaced, although about three years ago GamesRadar saw an internal EA release schedule whichincludedBlack 2, with a 'TBC' release date...

To get the full story on Bodycount, check outOfficial Xbox Magazine UKwhen it goes on sale this week.