50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is an existential game. I had to spend several days thinking about Swordfish Studios’ latest work before posting this review. When I showed the game to my girlfriend, she said, “I can’t believe this game exists!” I think her reaction does well to sum up the feelings that this stop ‘n pop shooter can bring about in the player. One can’t help but wonder how a game such as 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand could ever end up in the disc tray of your console. It is, in fact, a real game, with controls and graphics, that someone made, that you can buy and play with your own, actual hands. And you know what? Not only does Blood on the Sand exist, it’s fun too.
Unlike the space-time continuum, the good/bad scale is linear. It cannot be warped and bent so that a game can be “so bad, that it’s good,” as if traveling through a critical wormhole. So let’s be clear before this review continues–Blood on the Sand is a bad game. The sore thumb here is the story. Without going into too much detail, the object of the game is to get 50 Cent’s diamond-encrusted skull back (the skull was payment for a concert that he put on somewhere in the Middle East). The story has a bad start, and it only gets worse with each chapter. In terms of design, the graphics are mediocre and Blood on the Sand does suffer from some texture pop-in. Despite the busy interface, it actually just plays like a dumbed-down Gears of War. The color-coded ammo boxes you pick up match with the color of the enemies’ shirts. The significance of this is that the color indicates what kind of ammo is contained within the boxes or what kind of weapon the enemy holds (i.e. a blue box contains shotgun shells and an enemy wearing a blue shirt will be holding a shotgun). This can either come off as being either courteous or insulting to the player. I found it the latter. In addition, the developers went out of their way to hide crates of jewelry and treasure all over the maps behind breakable walls. This is fine and all, but I don’t think it counts as hiding if they tell you within the first five minutes of the game that any wall with a huge, orange G-Unit “G” on it is breakable.
“But, I thought you said this game was fun,” you say? Oh, it is. Blood on the Sand is fun because it comes off as an arcade-like shooter–the kind with points. With respect to points, someone who has gotten a nice grasp of the game will find that there’s a lot of things to keep track of during a gunfight. You kill enemies. You get points for killing them. They drop money. You pick up the money. You get points for picking up the money. You kill the next guy before the kill combo ends. Kill combos lead to even more points. And as the cherry on top, you remember to taunt your enemies’ corpses after each kill for a 25% bonus on your points. The money is used to buy more taunts, melee kills, and guns-firearms being the only helpful one of the three. The points are used to unlock things such as medals, artwork, and songs to add to the play list (the game’s soundtrack is a customizable play list of Mr. Cent’s music). There’s nothing like running through a decimated Middle Eastern shopping mall and gunning down enemies while having “P.I.M.P” pumping on your track list. And yes, “In Da Club” is un-lockable. Although these un-lockables never give you an advantage over your in-game enemies, there is something enjoyable about racking up millions of points in this game. Speaking of points, the checkpoints in Blood on the Sand are plentiful (see what I did there?). The game developers at Swordfish Studios did a nice job of keeping the frustration levels to a minimum (hard mode can get a bit dicey) by including lots of checkpoints in the game. Co-op with a good-humored friend is probably the best way to experience this game’s 5-7 hour-long campaign. Unfortunately, I have none of those. I’m still looking for someone to giggle and gun through co-op mode with.
Although I had to brave my way through Blood on the Sand alone with an AI-controlled G-Unit member, I still had a lot of fun doing it. I think $60 is definitely asking too much for this game. However, it’s worth considering at $40 or $30 and would make an excellent rental. The best way to think about 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is to compare it to Snakes on a Plane. They both have atrocious plots, but they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re just over-the-top and entertaining.
This game confused me as it took me quite some time to gather my thoughts about it. Although enjoyable, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. While the disc was spinning around and booting up for the first time, I asked myself, “Is this game really in my drive?” Ten minutes later, I found myself wondering, “How can a bad game be so fun?” and “If a bad game is fun to play, does that mean it’s actually good?” Semantics! Good, bad, whatever. There was one statement that stuck with me and was always unchallenged while I played through Blood on the Sand (both times). “This game tape is fun.”
Things you will encounter while playing 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand:
- exploding or incendiary handgun bullets
- exploding ramps
- obligatory on-rail helicopter/turret level
- cheesy jokes between G-Unit member and Fifty
- partial whale-tail
- many expletives (i.e. “Fire in the motha ****in’ hole, bitches!” after throwing a grenade)
- very forgiving Quick-Time Events that involve pressing just one button a set amount of times
- treasure being referred to as “shine”
- free 50 Cent music videos (with enough points, that is)
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