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Genre: Third-Person Action Publisher: THQ Developer: Swordfish Studios Players: 1-2

By Keith B (6th Mar 2009)

Ah, 50 Cent. He must be a fan of video games because this isn’t his first, and judging by the positives in Blood on the Sand, it won’t be his last either. His previous venture into gaming, Bulletproof was abysmal, so it has to be said that everyone involved has put the yards in to make Blood on the Sand something worth playing.

Let me paint you a picture, because that’s probably the best way to describe what unfolds across the 20 missions in nine scenarios. Fifty Cent went into an office somewhere and told the people there that he looked like a fool in his previous game, and that he wanted his image redeemed. When asked what sort of content he’d like in it, he said: “Something I can stick on when my mates are around, where we can shoot shit and blow stuff up, except it has to be good, not shit, like the last one”. And they then set to work on making something that’s like a bastardisation of John Woo’s Stranglehold and Army of Two.

The stupid story sees Fiddy and his crew from the G Unit in pursuit of somebody who has stolen a skull from him. He finishes a show and the Middle Eastern promoter says he’s been robbed and so doesn’t have the $10 million to pay our rapper, but he’s got this priceless skull that’s adorned with diamonds which Fiddy accepts. He’s then robbed by a woman (which is strange because none of the 10,000 or so people you obliterate through the game can get near him). And so, off he goes on a trail of destruction from the slums of LA to the desert towns of the Middle East in pursuit of his skull.

What unfolds is a real mish mash of action genres but surprisingly, it all works reasonably well. You’re paired with a member of G Unit, and this can be either AI controlled or you can allow other players to drop in or drop out of the game at will. You carry four types of weapons at any time – a rifle (M16, an so on), handgun, close combat (SMGs and shotguns) and a special weapon, either a rocket launcher or sniper rifle. As you move through a level, enemies spring out of windows or jeeps, always indicated by a red DANGER symbol on the screen. The reason there’s no subtlety to it is because you need to know where they are, to get your combos up. That’s right, combos. Headshots, firing while exposed (from cover), killing tougher enemies – al this gives you a multiplier. Once you complete the game, you can retry any level you like to get a higher score, and funnily enough I’ve played most of them multiple times to do just this, despite having finished it to write this review.
Another thing which will bring you back, and essential to getting those gold ratings in missions, is the hidden targets and posters on each level. Finding these gives you a score bonus, and getting them all on a level gives you massive points. In this regard it’s very much like The Club, except all that had was the points scoring, where this has much more.

But beyond that, it’s all mindless fun. Throw in some driving levels, a level shooting from a chopper tearing a town apart like never before and you realise this is the Die Hardof video games. Check your brain at the door, sir, you won’t need it in here. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be dismissed. The gun handling is good, the weapon range is impressive, and there’s a massive 40 track list of a soundtrack to bop along to as you murder. Even if you’re not a 50 cent fan, you can turn the tunes off and play with instrumentals. See, even the game itself doesn’t take any liberties that you’re a fan of the guy.



So what are the faults? It’s far too easy, for one. Even on the hard difficulty you should be able to cruise through most of the game without too many headaches. Some of the weapons are too good – once you get the hang of one or two of the LMGs then you’ll rarely use anything else, with their 50 or 100 round clips. The latter levels are plagued by slow texture loading, often taking 10 to 15 seconds for the walls of some fortress to actually load more than just a brown block. This is particularly infuriating, although playing from the hard drive may help alleviate this, I didn’t check.

The cover system works well for the most part, like Gears of War,but it’s not quite as good. For example, is you leap up behind a pillar, you can only shoot out the one side, so it can be a fair bit of trial and error to get it to work the way you want, which isn’t the best thing where there’s 12 men shooting sniper rifles at you.

But who cares, because this is pure fantasy, it’s never meant to be something you ponder once you walk away from the console. It does exactly what it says on the tin – mindless action.



But goddamn if I don’t look back at the time I spent on it and grin. It’s significantly longer than you’d imagine too, with perhaps 15 hours game time if you try and challenge yourself a little bit and put it on Hard. So really, what more can you ask for – good physics, good soundtrack, loads of gaming, multiplayer, replayability? Believe me, nobody is as surprised as I am by that last sentence. But I tell you, this is worth a go.

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