Bodycount

Yet with an emphasis on big and noisy wholesale destruction of ears and eyes, and a fixation on guns and violence, there definitely some parallels. Though Codemasters has the better soundtrack.

This is, despite the years between them, the spiritual successor to Black, the 2006 Criterion-developed title coined as "Burnout with guns" - explosions, collateral damage, and a sense of joyous weight behind every yank of the trigger. Slip forward a generation and you can still feel the solidity of those foundations in place.

That sense of satisfaction firing a gun is still there for one. Controller we have in hand it may be, but thanks to a beautiful marriage of visual and audio, all we see is the heavy-set bullet-chewer, hear the roar as we fire. Yank the trigger and the barrel spews death at whatever we point at. Environments are shorn to wood chips, pebbles and debris. It's an instant appetite for destruction.

You're an agent for global-righting organisation The Network, tossing you into conflict zones to clean up as your bosses see fit. The game opens by dumping you in Africa - tutorial is on the move through the bullet-ridden, dusty streets.

We're immediately taken with the cover mechanic, an intuitive system that for one button hold lets you duck, lean and look over cover to shoot with a touch of the stick. The environments are somewhat destructible, so its important not to do push-ups for too long, unless you want someone's devastated abode on your conscience.

So weapons great, destruction, lovely. The fundamentals are all there; pure arcade action. Sadly the rest isn't up to par.

The areas you visit, taking you around Africa, Asia and into a shadowy organisation's ('The Target', as they're known, being the Bond villain equivalent of turning up to a date wearing the same shirt, such is their similar intent on shaping the world as well) HQ, are relatively dull.

For a game's that's clothed in the same visual style as Brink, there's a poor use of colour here. Topography is uninteresting, there's a lack of variety in level design, and generic enemies dominate the battlefield. East Asia is somewhat more interesting due to the rain-lashed nighttime landscapes and the fizz of neon lighting throughout. There's a low grade presentation throughout the game that seems at odds with its big and bold style.

Tackling The Target offers a break from the drab colours of the outside world, the innards of their bases of gleaming minimalist designs, all primary reds and black mixed with plastic white. Ragtag militias are replaced with same-colour armoured soldiers. The initial entry harks to Mirror's Edge surreal DLC maps, and the contrast is uplifting; unfortunately corridors and the odd stairwell becomes repetitive and we long for the gritty world above.

The missions are relatively unimaginative, a narrow range of downloading data files or blowing anti-aircraft cannons hustling you from one point of the map to the next with little deviation or difference in the result. The whole things feels like running through a mission-based multiplayer solo.

Destruction is amusing, but is less advantageous to gameplay strategy than you'd hope. It's not nearly as widespread as, for example, Red Faction: Armageddon. Think more the first Battlefield: Bad Company, and as such for a game hooked around creating your own path on the battlefield is too selective in what you can and can't shred. Many objects are glued to the ground and not affected all of the laws of physics.

The developer has gambled on another addition to the interface; each enemy downed will explode like a Pinata, cascading 'Intel' pickups - colourful items that shine against the backdrop - that fill up a on-screen meter, which can be emptied on particular skills.

There are health buffs, or explosive bullets increasing damage to enemies. There's also the ability to drain the meter to use The Network's reinforcements with air strikes. Nicely, the Intel is funnelled towards the area in which Bodycount does make the biggest bang: your arsenal.

There's also a combo-based scoring system in place, which tots up to your end-level score which is posted directly to online leaderboards. Skill shots ignite your combo runs, and these range from everything from shooting enemies in the back to using explosive barrels to take out multiple troops. You can revisit any level to try and better that highscore, digging a little bit deeper into the game's arcade leanings and explaining somewhat the lack of story thrills when clocking through the campaign first time.

With the campaign over - around six hours - there's co-op and competitive game modes to tackle online (the developer has to be commended for including split-screen play here). Co-op's your standard Horde mode, pitting you and a friend against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. It's a decent diversion.

With such a solid foundation to build on, its slightly baffling why Bodycount feels only partly finished, and why the great game whose solid building plans were plain to see through development wasn't there to greet us when we sat down for the review. It's a bloody shame.