50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is the quintessential middle-of-the-road game. On one end, the gameplay is serviceable but relatively uninteresting. On the other end, the action and dialogue are incredibly over-the-top and hilarious, providing many entertaining moments. The result falls in the middle of these two extremes, making Blood on the Sand a game that's surprisingly hard to recommend one way or the other.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand's gameplay is very similar to other cover based shooters such as Gears of War. In fact, Blood on the Sand's gameplay sometimes feels like a complete rip-off of Gears of War. The controls and camera are almost identical, with the cover mechanics and shooting feeling like lesser versions. All of this comes together to make for an extremely familiar shooter, yet it still isn't as crisp as the game(s) it's mimicking. The level design and AI are where things start to really go downhill, however. This is as linear as games come, and your foes are as dumb as bricks. Blood on the Sand is also an incredibly short game. In fact, my time spent playing this game was a single four hour sitting, in which a friend and I were able to beat it in its entirety on the hardest difficulty setting. And it wasn't due to any amazing skills on our part. This is just a really short, really easy game that manages to avoid introducing any new ideas in the process.

Even with its middling gameplay, I'll have to say that I still enjoyed 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. That's because all the stuff surrounding the gameplay is just absolutely bonkers- but in a hilarious kind of way. The narrative is ridiculously retarded, and the characters are equally nonsensical. But it all wound up being really funny, though I don't know if it was intended to be or not. Either way, it was entertaining. The best part was perhaps all the over-the-top dialogue. This game probably averages somewhere in the neighborhood of two profanities per second, and strings them together in ways such as "Fuck this fuckin' shit!" or "I'ma kill your whole fuckin' generation motherfucker!" It's profane, but it's also hysterical. In fact, the game rewards you via bonus points for constantly throwing down such obscenities. There are other weird contrivances as well, such as the fact that each of the game's four boss fights is a helicopter, enemies color-code their T-shirts based on what gun they're wielding, and practically all of the game's co-op actions are opening these random garage doors that are placed seemingly everywhere.

I could go on and on about all of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand's weirdness, but we'd be here for longer than seems practical. This is definitely a weird game, but it manages to be so in a hilarious kind of way. At the same time, it does little on the gameplay front that's worth writing home about, and might not be worth the price of admission as a result. But if you can find it in a cheap bargain bin and are looking for a good laugh, then 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand just might surprise you.

For additional information on my review style and scoring system, click here.