So, I’ve finished the first game in our little project, 50 Cent Blood on The Sand:
When I first picked up this game, I laughed at the concept. 50 Cent fighting terrorists in some middle eastern country. Then I got into the game. The gameplay was surprisingly good, playing much like Gears of War with fairly effective aiming and cover systems. The whole time you have a partner with you to watch your back. The AI on the partner was decent, it could have been better. My one gripe with the partner is the random warning dialogue he would repeatedly yell out. He only had a few phrases telling you to take cover, or that it was clear, this quickly became annoying. Playing online, your AI partner is replaced with another player, which is actually pretty cool, except that none of the people that joined up with my game had their headsets on, so there was no communication between the two players.
The enemies are generic shooter style, color coded based on their archetypes, red being explosive users blue being close combat shot-gun types etc. The level design was done fairly well, giving you just enough room to run around and explore without allowing you to get off track from the direction you’re heading. On each level, there are 5 posters to tear off the wall, and 5 targets to shoot hidden all around the map after each checkpoint. They’re hidden extremely well the most I managed to find on any level was 4 of each. Generally I dislike things like this, because they break immersion, but this time around, I actually enjoyed hunting them down.
The story picks up with you acquiring a diamond encrusted human skull only to have it stolen, you have to get it back. There was no real introduction to the story, or why you would want a diamond encrusted skull in the first place. I quickly lost interest in the story, by the last ¼ of the game I found myself skipping cut scenes just to get back to the action.
All of that said, the game was short, consisting of nine total missions. Six of which were on foot, two driving a Hummer with a mounted gun turret, and one as a door gunner in a helicopter. They served to break up the ground combat, which often felt a bit repetitive.
You can’t have a game staring a rapper and not mention the music. The playlist in the game, as expected, consisted of several 50 Cent and G-Unit songs. The library was actually fairly large for being such a short game. One problem I ran into was that the playlist seemed to start over from the beginning rather than play straight through between levels. However, that may have just been me only noticing a few select songs when they came on. The music kept pace in the often hectic gun battles, while keeping my ears entertained at the same time. As a fan of hip-hop, it definitely made the game more enjoyable than it would have been without it.
Overall the game was much better than I expected it to be. I figured I would get to the half way mark, turn it off, and never touch it again, but I had fun playing through the whole thing. Would I play it again? I doubt it, but at the same time, there are several other games out there that are much, much, worse that this one. If you get the chance, give it a play through, if for no other reason than to hear 50 Cent do voice over
I’d have to give it a 6.5 out of 10
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