One of the first things I did when I dusted off my old Xbox 360 was to start looking for games that I might’ve overlooked or just straight up missed out on playing. I had a bit of narrower mind when it came to what games I wanted to play during the Xbox 360 generation and as such, my game library wasn’t nearly as diverse as it could’ve been. Well,
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was a game I came across that seemed interesting (having been a fan of 50 Cent’s music in my teen years), but didn’t expect to be all that good, given how his last game reviewed. After finishing the campaign on Hard mode and collecting all the Gold badges for each mission chapter, I can safely say that I’m surprised at how much fun I had with this game. It’s a mindlessly fun, “over-the-top” shooter that’s pretty easy to pick up and play, even now. I kind of wish I had picked it up around the time it came out, since the novelty of playing as 50 Cent would’ve carried the game a lot further for me than it does roughly 12 years later. The timing of it becoming a backwards compatible title couldn’t have been better, since I felt more comfortable playing this game on Xbox One than Xbox 360.
The game opens with 50 Cent and members of the G-Unit, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and DJ Whoo Kid (who I can’t say I’ve heard of), giving a concert somewhere in the Middle East. They’re owed a cool 10 million dollars for their performance, but are unable to collect because their promoter, Anwar, gets robbed. After 50 Cent threatens Anwar, he produces a rare artifact: A diamond encrusted skull that supposedly belonged to a long deceased prince’s wife. Anwar claims that the skull is considered “priceless” and 50 ends up taking it in lieu of payment. Before they can even leave the city, however, the group is ambushed by a paramilitary gang and skull is stolen by a woman named Leila. This leads to 50 (with the help of which ever G-Unit partner you’ve picked) shooting and fighting their way through bombed-out, decrepit, urban environments. They eventually catch up to Leila, only to learn that this paramilitary group is led by a warlord named Kamal, who is just sort of a “one note” villain character. Kamal eventually betrays Leila and her and 50 team up on the premise of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and organizing an assault on Kamal’s compound. This is all done with the singular motivation of 50 wanting his skull back, to the point where it becomes this game’s version of the Holy Grail.
The writing and the story is not the reason I picked this game up. It’s pretty schlocky and a bit too “on-the-nose” at times, but that’s about what I’d expect from a game that features 50 Cent and truthfully, I’m all for it. If you take the writing in this game too seriously, then you’re kind of missing the point. If there’s one criticism I have of the overall story, it’s that feels a bit too drawn out for my liking. Which is kind of hilarious when the whole game only took me about 5 to 6 hours to complete. The plot suffers from the same issue that Far Cry 3 did: where you spend the majority of the game pursuing who the game largely establishes as main villain, only to kill him off in a boss fight and have the game go “Oops, here’s a another villain that was supposedly pulling all the strings from the shadows, that we’ve never mentioned and are just trotting him out now! Go bother him for a bit.” This results in another 2 missions including a boss fight and while it only take about 30 to 45 minutes to finish those last two chapters, it all just felt like needless padding. The story concludes as well as it could’ve after mission 7 and that’s about where I would’ve ended the story.
The core gameplay loop will feel familiar to any one who’s played a Gears of War game or something comparable to that. Blood on the Sand is a bog standard third person, cover based shooter where you can snap to cover, pop out to shoot enemies, blind fire from behind cover, dodge roll to avoid grenades and taking damage and you have regenerating health. The level design and art direction are similar to what you’d see in games like Call of Duty or Gears of War. That’s not to say it’s bad or unoriginal, the levels function as needed, they’re mostly well rendered and will feel familiar to a lot of gamers. Weapons are all based on real world models and are broken down into 4 categories. You’ve got Assault Rifles and LMGs, close combat weapons like Shotguns and SMGs, long range weapons like sniper rifles and Rocket Launchers and Pistols that have infinite ammo. You can also collect money from smashing open crates and killing enemies in order to purchase weapons through pay phones found throughout each level. There’s incentive to try and collect as much money as possible, not just by killing enemies but seeking out and smashing all the crates in each level. Aside from the “Millionaire” achievement, which requires you to have $1,000,000 in the bank, the weapons in this game can be pretty expensive but you’re going to want to start buying them as soon as you can. The starting weapon is an AK-47 with a 25 round magazine that does fuck all damage. But collect enough money and you can buy what appears to be a scoped G36 that can double as a long range rifle. Or and LMG with a 100 round magazine that cuts enemies down with brutal efficiency.
The combat in this game I’d say is pretty decent. There are some good blood, gore and particle effects when killing enemies or when bullets are whizzing by you and bouncing off walls or objects. The Shotguns and LMGs have a pretty heavy sound to them and they’re both fun to use. The game even has it’s own version of bullet time called “Gangsta Fire”, which will feel familiar to anyone who’s played a Max Payne or F.E.A.R game. Enemy movement slows down to a crawl, but you can move at normal speed allowing you to dodge enemy fire and have more precise aiming. You can also use Gangsta fire to help you get in close to enemies and perform a “Counter Kill”. Hit a series of button prompts with the right timing and, if done correctly, it allows 50 to pull off what is essentially a Glory Kill. While it won’t regenerate your health, it does regenerate your gangsta fire, offers up huge points bonus, feature some pretty brutal animations and the enemies can’t fuck you over while this is happening. The one interesting and kind of funny gameplay mechanic is the “Taunts” system. I’m trying to think of a game where shit talking enemy NPCs as you put a bullet through their brain was a part of a game’s core loop and I honestly can’t think of one, before or since this game come out. Immediately after killing someone, click in the Left Thumbstick and 50’s going to throw out some hilariously “scathing” one liners. Call some one a “Punk Bitch!”, a “Fucking cocksucker!” or to “Eat this, you pussy!” and it gives you a score increase of +25% per kill, on top of whatever bonuses you accumulate as well with each kill. This all helps culminate into the game’s end of level points system, so spam click that left thumbstick and tell enemies to “Step up, pussies!” every time, because I sure as shit did. On top of that, as part of the game’s economy, you can also buy “Taunt” packs as well as “Counter Kills” to go along with weapon purchases.
The game also functions a lot like an arcade style shooter, where points and combo multipliers are popping up on screen almost constantly. You get extra points by chaining together multiple kills, for lighting enemies on fire, blowing them up with explosives or getting a headshot among other bonuses, while using mechanics like the “Counter Kills” and “Taunts” to bolster your score even further. Several times during each chapter, these “Scenarios” pop up that require you to complete a specific task within a time limit. These “Scenarios” are optional in the sense that you won’t fail the chapter if you miss them, but the “Scenario Master” achievement requires completing 50 of them (which will happen pretty easily during the run of play) and they also give you points towards your end of chapter score. Theses “Scenarios” aren’t all that hard to complete and they largely boil down to “Kill X number of enemies with a certain time” or “Collect X amount of money within a certain time”. At the end of each chapter, you’re awarded either a Bronze, Silver or Gold badge based on how high your score is. There’s achievements tied to getting all of the Silver and Gold badges, but if want those Gold Badges, you’ll have to play on Hard mode since the game doesn’t afford you enough points on the lower difficulties. Don’t let that dissuade you though, this is a pretty breezy game even on Hard mode with only the last few missions providing anything remotely challenging. Certain levels end with a boss fight against a helicopter that gets rehashed three times and it just feels really uninspired and repetitive; use “Gangsta Fire” and shoot rockets at it until it blows up.
I’d say the way the game flows is pretty good. It boils down to the structure of: hallway, arena, hallway, arena, with the combat having a decent pace to it, for the most part. Watching enemies hurtle through the air when getting blown up or sending enemies flying back 10 feet after pumping a shotgun slug into their chest really helps embody the over-the-top, arcade shooter that it is. My one criticism revolves around the posters you collect and targets you have to shoot placed around the level. These serve as the games collectible strands and they also tie into the points system in the game. Finding all 5 posters and shooting down all 5 targets results in an extra 600,000 points collectively. There are exceptions, but you have get between 1,000,000 and 1,600,000 points (depending on the level) in order to get the Gold badge for that chapter, in fact, it might be borderline impossible to get the Gold badge in a level without finding all posters and targets. This is a problem for two reasons: 1) it grinds the combat flow to a halt, having to search the area and make sure you didn’t miss a poster or a target and 2) the game’s point system should’ve been balanced in a way that getting a Gold badge on a mission is still reasonably obtainable, even if you’ve missed one or two posters or targets. This is the one part of the game that I can say that I truly disliked, but knowing that it was virtually required to get the Gold badges, I begrudgingly pulled up a locations guide and hunted them all down.
The music in this game I suppose hinges on whether or not you like 50 Cent’s music. Although if you’re buying a game with 50 Cent in it, I assume you must like his music to some extent. There’s an in-game music player that allows you to pick and choose songs from various albums and have that be your in-game soundtrack. I’m not as big a fan of 50 Cent’s music as I used to be, but I still manage to find about a dozen songs I remember from back in the day and then just shuffle those songs during the gameplay.
On a technical level, this game is mostly fine. It runs pretty smoothly on both Vanilla Xbox 360 and Vanilla Xbox One. The loading times are pretty quick and I experienced no freezes or crashes-to-dashboard. The game does hitch for a moment when saving a checkpoint but run pretty smoothly otherwise, with not much in the way of lag or stuttering during combat. The game runs on Unreal Engine 3, so graphically, it looks fine. It does however suffer from pretty noticeable texture pop-in, especially when initially loading into a level, that UE 3 became infamous for.
In terms of achievements, it’s a pretty easy list to get through with most being tied to completing each mission for both single player and co-op. there’s your standard difficulty based ones, as well as ones for unlocking all weapons and ‘Taunt” packs and one for having a million dollars in the bank.
Overall, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was a pleasant surprise for me and I didn’t think I’d enjoy this game as much as I did. It’s just a mindlessly fun, third person shooter that’s easy to pick up and play, while coming in with a play time of around 5 to 6 hours. If you’ve got a weekend to kill or if your in between your favourite releases, you could do way worse than 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
4.0