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Today’s piece, covering 50 Cent’s newest foray into gaming, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, is going to be downright entertaining.  Because frankly, I hate this game for a lot of good reasons, most of which I’m going to go into at length and some of which will probably get me firebombed.

First, it’s safe to say that just about everybody was looking at this game with baited breath, considering the floptacular lack of success that was his first installment, 50 Cent: Bulletproof.  Most were afraid that this one was going to turn out like the first, only possibly MORE so, and that amount of suck probably would’ve caused the universe to collapse in on itself.  I saw the X-Play review on that one and I’ve yet to hear Sessler sound so absolutely horrified by what he’s playing on an Xbox 360.  Well, most of us needn’t have worried–indeed, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand will prove superior to 50 Cent: Bulletproof, but frankly, this isn’t saying much.  I’ve had prostate exams that I preferred to 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, if for no other reason than they didn’t take near as long to finish and actually cost slightly less.  Though, I do confess to a similar feeling of violation afterward from both the exam and the game.

Anyway, in this game, you play 50 Cent, who apparently travels everywhere armed and even performs concerts in Arab countries while wearing hand grenades and a bulletproof vest.  Meanwhile, waiting backstage is a guy who owes Fifty a whole lot of money for reasons that we don’t even have to bother with (I had to read the Wiki to discover it was pay for doing the concert. Seriously, I don’t even remember the game MENTIONING this!) –just know that this guy owes Fifty a lot of money. In an attempt to save his life from several growled, almost-audible threats from Fifty, punctuated with gun barrels placed directly in his face (this happened like THREE TIMES.  I think we get the point–you’re threatening a random Arab man who owes you money with a gun.) he offers Fifty a priceless treasure, a human skull covered in diamonds.  Now, right there, Fifty probably should have been insulted–what, you can buy off a ten million dollar debt (yes, ten million) with a piece of gigantic bling.  Yes, that’s nice.  What’s next, Random Arab Man?  Offer him some of Dave Chappelle’s vaunted “purple drank”? For crying out loud, I’m not even black and I’M offended by this.

Of course, it’s not long, seeing as how we’re in some random Arabic country, before Fifty’s magnificent new diamond-encrusted human skull is stolen from him by a busty acrobatic Arabic woman who’s apparently the henchman of one of the area’s biggest heroin dealers. Now, Fifty’s got to recover his wonderful new piece of medical waste and try not to get killed.  This will involve him running from place to place and shooting everything that moves.

I’m amazed that Fifty hasn’t gotten sued into OBLIVION by now by some PC group.  Seriously–this should be AMAZINGLY offensive to at least THREE different anti-defamation leagues that I can think of.  The women’s groups should be torqued beyond imagining because Fifty refers to pretty much every woman he sees as “bitch”, and none of them, as far as I can tell, have anything resembling a speaking part.  The Arab groups, meanwhile, should be enraged at being portrayed as barely literate gun-toting thugs.  And don’t even get me started from how the various black groups should be feeling–for crying out loud, this whole game is Fifty Cent committing a massive murder spree in a desperate pursuit to recover his JEWELRY.

I’m a straight white male and even I’M offended.

The gameplay itself, meanwhile, is nothing really that bad, but nothing that particularly special, either.  It’s the kind of action shooter game I’ve played several times before, just with different scenery and different weapons and such.  You’ll also get to look for posters and shoot targets to add to your score for no conceivable reason.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear—50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is vastly, VASTLY improved over the original.  But frankly, that’s still not saying much.  Fifty’s games have gone from unplayable to average, and while in terms of the mean this jacks up the score phenomenally it’s still a pretty low score in toto.  I can’t recommend this one in any good conscience, mostly because I’d rather see this kind of low-rent pointlessness removed from the market.