Well, I totally overlooked this game upon release, then one day when trying to decide what to get my friend for his birthday, I noticed a copy sitting on the shelf at the local GameStop. He's a rich suburban white kid with an ironic taste for rap and hip-hop culture... so I picked it up along with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 since he likes the uguu as well. GameStop clerk made fun of me for one of those purchases...
it wasn't Neptunia...
So I gave him his 2 gifts and said, "we should play the 50 Cent game"... and surprise surprise, it actually looked to be fairly decent! Keep in mind I'm not huge into hiphop and I don't play many western games. So a licensed game starring a rapper a bit past his prime, made by THQ (a company whose experiences with back in the 16 bit days caused me to totally avoid them since), made by western developers... Definitely not something I'd expect to enjoy!
A few weeks later, I'm hanging out with some college friends, one of which is an editor at TrueAchievements... she is a huge Xbox fangirl and has a ton of 360 games, including this one. I said to her "that 50 Cent game actually seemed pretty decent!" and she's like, "yeah, it's really good! I actually enjoyed it so much to try and get 1000/1000 in it! You wanna borrow it?", so I did, and as soon as I finished up with Ni No Kuni, decided to start it.
Finished it up last nite (not gonna try to 1000/1000 it, but there are one or two easy-to-get achievements that I missed that I'm gonna aim for tonite), and while the whole novelty behind it wears off quickly, the game is a solid cover-shooter with some niggling issues.
First, the good. The story is point-blank dumb (50 giving a concert in a wartorn nameless middle eastern country, was promised money by his promoter, promoter doesn't have it so gives him a priceless skull, which quickly gets stolen), and the dialogue is hilarious. You get to pick your co-op partner from another member of G-Unit. I had to go with Tony Yayo since he lives fairly close to me. It's really funny some of the shit they say... "Hey 50, jump over this big-ass ramp!" or "Shii, help me fiddy it fuckin' burns man!". There's even a dedicated "swear" button, and you buy add-on insults as the game progresses...
The score system is a pretty nice feature. There are little "scenarios" that involve quickly taking down enemies (such as "kill all the heavy weapon enemies") for added bonuses. You get more points for taking enemies out with melee, or killing them from outside cover... adding a slight element of risk-reward. There's also a chaining system, where you can kill up to 5 enemies in quick succession for even more points. The levels are divided into areas and each of them has up to 3 tiers of rewards based on your score. I played the game on normal, but I hear you get more points if you play on hard. There's also shit to find in the levels, like posters or targets, that add to your score. The system isn't as deep as something like Vanquish, but it's nice to see a western game actually add a scoring system based on risk/reward.
The graphics are pretty much what you expect out of an Unreal engine game, texture pop-in included.. lots of rubble and yellow everywhere... since you are in a war-torn city don't expect anything truly stunning or memorable... what is nice though is the game runs at 60 FPS... though with the caveat that the game has quite a bit of screen-tearing.
For the weak... the cover mechanics aren't that great. There's a lot of jankiness to them, like spots where you should be able to cover but you can't, and a lot of times where you are clearly behind cover but are still getting hit (especially frustrating in the later levels when every enemy is equipped with machine guns and they are all over the place).
Level design is also pretty bad in parts... it's got that typical western-game style of level design where half of the map is blocked by rubble (Half Life 2 or Gears of War for example), although there are a few alcoves where you can find crates filled with money. But what really hurts the level design is the repetition in everything.. you're mostly fighting the same few terrorists, one of em throws grenades, another has a rocket launcher... and then there are 3 annoying helicopter "boss" battles. A few of the levels really overstay their welcome, making the flaws in the cover system and gameplay even more apparent. There are 2 vehicle sections and a rail-shooter on a helicopter part, these are reasonably fun diversions from the core gameplay.
Maybe my biggest problem with the game is that Vanquish spoiled me for every other cover-shooter... though I say the game is still very much worth playing. That is, if you like 50 Cent's music (the licensed soundtrack has about 50+ songs to it, though you unlock them as the game progresses and both "Wanksta" and "In The Club" are only available near the end). Or if you really like cover-shooters.
