Gangstas

Rapper vs helicopter. Rapper wins, apparently

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. I mentioned I bought (and was intending to play) this horrendous sounding game a couple of posts back. I did actually follow through on this - and the game was about as good as I expected.

Actually, that's a lie. It was actually much better than I expected.

I'm sorry Rena, please don't kill me!

As I mentioned the other day, the storyline is A M A Z I N G. You probably don't care about spoilers for this particular game, but if you do, I suggest you be very careful about reading this post!

The game opens with 50 Cent finishing off the last show of his tour in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. His promoter guy can't pay him the $10 million he promised, so Fitty pulls a shotgun on him.

At this point, I was wondering where he got the shotgun from. I mean, he walked in empty handed, wearing his usual gangster stuff, which is easy enough to conceal a pistol in, sure. But a SHOTGUN?

Anyway, the guy eventually gives in, and gives Fitty a jewel encrusted human skull (apparently priceless) as payment. On his way out of the country he sits in a hummer, arguing with the guy about which gangstas are more gangsta - New York or unspecified country's. At this point I was bored and didn't care - until explosions and gunfire exploded around them. In the chaos, some random woman steals the skull and escapes.

"Bitch took my skull!"

You spend the entire game shooting lots and lots of gangstas, until you eventually run out of gangstas to kill, it seems.

The gameplay is fairly standard fare - third person cover based shooting. Except that I didn't need to use cover until the *very* late stages of the game where I was consistently facing off against snipers, gun turrets and helicopters. Until this point, I didn't so much as hide behind a rock. It appears our buddy Fitty is bulletproof (unsurprisingly, Bulletproof is the title of 50 Cent's first game. Yes, THERE IS MORE THAN ONE OF THESE GAMES) - also a fact he mentions in a cutscene at one point. He also proves it - taking a bullet at point blank range late on - then getting up about 5 seconds later to fire rockets at a helicopter.

The game is quite rough around the edges in terms of gameplay though. Some things just aren't done well, some things completely clash, and some things make no sense whatsoever. For example, the weaponry types are colour coded. Grey for pistol (which you can never run out of ammo for), yellow for assault, blue for close range (shotguns, SMGs etc) and red for heavy weapons. This is fine, visual cues on the ammo boxes are handy.
The part that doesn't make sense about this is the fact that the enemy gangstas are also colour coded the same way. They wear brightly coloured tshirts which make it easy to see where they are, and give a general idea of what weapon they're carrying. It seems oddly out of place that there are so many gangstas packing weaponry that seem to be part of some kind of sick Wiggles impersonation group. Except much more violent. And now, much more dead.

When you kill an enemy, they drop money. You pick up their money, and spend it on more weaponry, "counter kills" (which is a fancy name for Quick Time Event melee kills), and taunts. I spent some money on taunts - they were less fun than the taunts you began with. You can also find cash in boxes (stashes I suppose). What doesn't make sense here, is that THE MONEY IS CEL-SHADED. Nothing else in the game is. This leads to a strange incongruence in the art style - though I really would have been happy if they'd just made the entire game a cartoon - its close enough already.

Also, 50 Cent has gangsta powah. There is literally a gangsta mode, which slows down time for a little while. I'm not sure if all of these things were Fitty's idea, but gangsta mode sounds like it could have been.

By far, the most annoying thing about this game is that its coop. Its a coop shooter in the vein of Gears of War. However, you can't actually play it coop on a single console - if you want to play this coop game in two player, you have to do it online. If you play solo, you choose one of Fitty's boys to follow you around, shoot at things, continuously yell at you to get into cover (because I never did until the end sequences), and occasionally help you open a door or give you a boost up a ledge. This annoys me - and its not the only game to do this (Crackdown, I believe, made the same mistake). If you're going to make a coop game, then let people actually play it coop on one console! Surely it's not that difficult to add a split screen!

Anyway, its over, and I have returned to Final Fantasy XIII. Woo!

And you'll be glad to know - he gets his skull back

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The backlog has been updated - since last mention, two games have been finished, and a bunch more added. It's getting ridiculous now...
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