50 Cent: Bulletproof

"Dig it, G-Dog! Dig it a big pit and dump your copy in. Word."

Before we get down to this review, let me assure you, I am not a racist. I'll have you know that it would be mighty foolish for a video gamer to be player-hating, as that makes up one half of his life (the other half comes in the form of Mountain Dew), and I've been given countless praises for giving people props from my local theatre group. Got that? Good. Let's move on, gentlemen.

On hearing about the news of this game being made, I was on the floor in hysterics. I stamped "BAD GAME" on it instantly, knowing it would be nothing but mindless gangsta rubbish, and left it in the dark. However, it was only recently that I was passed on a couple of discs in paper sleeves from a friend who said for me to try them out - one of which was 50 Cent: Bulletproof, nestled between a copy of Manhunt and Super Monkeyball 2. I was going to toss it aside un-played, but curiosity got the better of me, since I hadn't heard of any news about it since I first read the initial news and I had nothing better to do, so I popped it in the disc tray.

As with all video games, you get a copycat trend. First Person Shooters for the PC took hold and swamped the market after the success of titles such as Half Life, but in recent years, it's been nothing but clones of the urban-crime sandbox game that is the Grand Theft Auto series. Mafia, Driv3r, True Crime - they all stepped up to the batting plate only to be stomped down as cheap attempts to muscle in on already successful ground. So, to outdo this series, developers have taken to making more nitty and gritty titles, focusing more on the toughness of "street-life." One of these titles happens to be 50 Cent, so don't expect too much in the way of plot, as it's one big cliche now: respekt. It's all down to you being dissed or something, and you've got to work your way up the ghetto food chain to be Big Boss of the Hood. How do you do this? By banding together and fighting the crime? Get out of it! The solution is to grab a **** load of guns and run around the streets with rocket launchers blowing chunks out of thousands of people, again and again and again.

Well, with a nut job like 50 Cent on the loose, the other characters in the game must be absolutely bricking themselves, but even in the face of certain gangsta death, these guys know how to fight. There's no cheap AI which blindly wanders into your fire, but duckers, coverers and tactical reloaders. This was the turning point for the game; decent AI, but soon I felt glum again. How smart are these guys? At one point you're aiming a rocket at these guys, but they still insist on engaging in a fight instead of picking up their skirts and running for the hills. Sure, I may be knit-picking at this point, but these enemies don't change their tactics at all - it's the same damn AI under every model and skin, regardless of whether they're a "gangsta" or commando.

After the first level, I was already slumped in my seat in resentment of what was to come...more shooting. Okay, it's a shooter, but they could of toned it down a bit or spiced the festivities with a twist. It's you, a gun and baddies. Where's the challenge? The plot development? You get zilch of these interesting things, but to match with generic baddies, you get generic puzzles.

"The elevator's out of power. Find the switch to restore it!" is the general gist of it here, along with tottering about to find some items to proceed to the next room. It's just randomly placed and slows you down from anything important. Cheap and lazy, and the developers probably thought they could cover up the dullness of this formula with a bunch of 50 Cent rap songs and more cursing than a Voodoo spell book. How wrong they were.

Not only does this game glorify violence, but anything else that goes against the ethics of the world. After killing some guy, why not go over to his corpse and rifle through their pockets to steal some stuff? Or better yet, sneak up on a guy and perform a Takedown move similar to those from the Manhunt series, with plenty of guts and blood flying everywhere. Sheesh. What a pretty bunch of morales that 50 Cent sets our youth of today, eh?

"Anything else to declare, jimfish?"

Not much, save the visuals are somewhat a mixed bag of dark, bland environments, lit up only by the burning debris from 50 Cent's destruction. The graphics are somewhat nice, but nothing awe-spiring. Also, you will spend just about the same amount of timing fighting off hordes of enemy forces as you would with the camera. It goes crazy, and the most simplest of actions like aiming your weapon could send it hay-wire.

This game is a gimmick title, pumped out purely because developers wanted a cut of the urban-crime-a-thons and please the "gangsta pl8ers" and whatnot. If you don't like rap, you won't like this, as the makers will be damned if they even let a note of sensical music to be dropped into the soundtrack, but no, you're forced to listen to bland, mindless tunes - and by the way, you have to actually BUY the in-game music from 50 Cent's crew, which I suppose acts as a way of re-playability, but if mowing down millions of people just to listen to a song is your bag, I suggest you get help. I was lucky and I didn't have to pay for either the rental cost or the retail price, and I'd advise you to do the same. Don't buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/03/06