I've played better mindless shooters. Essentially its a 50 Cent fan service (which I'm not).
The cover mechanic is one of the worst I've experienced in a shooter. Most objects (baracades, walls, etc) do a pretty lousy job at protecting you from enemies' incoming bullet barrages. I died countless times due to a faraway foe shooting the hell out of my exposed elbow or the tip of my cap! The shooting is solid but nothing memorable. Outside of the G-Unit endorsement, the single player campaign plays like a generic shooter. On the flipside, Blood on the Sand does feature online co-op. This made it a bit ahead of its time being released fairly early in the PS3's lifecycle. I hated how about 95% of the game's bosses fights are with helicopters which all require the same strategy...blow it up to kingdom come. The game features a familiar mechanic called "gangsta fire" which allows you to temporary slow down time...which can be pretty cool but just building up the associated meter is kind of annoying. The game is 9 missions long and the majority of which is divided into 3 to 4 chapters each. The chapters are small but the pacing can be tedious depending on the difficulty level and weather or not you're trying to obtain every collectable possible within them. Speaking of which, personally I felt there were way too many collectables to find per chapter...we're talking 10, often times well hidden ones. Besides 2 specific missions, there isn't a whole lot of variety in the gameplay. It's basically run and gun the whole time. Your arsenal of weapons are pretty impressive and pretty awesome sounding. I've seen better visuals even that early in the PS3's lifecycle, but I've also seen worst.
Blood on the Sand's plot is absurdly ridiculous...and for me it wasn't in a good way. It was as shallow as all of the game's characters, so on a positive note they all fit into the game fairly well and there was some consistancy (not that that's necessarily a good thing). The game's main anatagonist seemed to change after every mission. One question that still boogles my mind: How is an old white southerner the leader of a gang of turban wearing thugs?! I don't think enough of his money could buy them nor would he be the least bit interested using it for that. Actually all the other characters in the game had better voice acting than G-Unit (which is maybe why they should stick to just making music). It just all felt like a shallow attempt to promote 50 Cent and the G-Unit brand instead taking itself seriously as a game.
My Breakdown:
What's Good:
- Solid shooting
- Great sound effects
- Online co-op campaign
- Great arsenal of weapons
What's Not-So-Good:
- Mediocre voice acting
- The constant and cheap self promotion of G-Unit
- The music just being a continous loop of the same 50 Cent songs.
- A lack of variety in the enviornments
- I've seen better visuals
- Enemies consitantly use one annoy strategy against you, to swarm the hell out of you in seemlying endless waves
What's Bad:
- The terrible cover system
- The tedious pacing
- Too many collectables to find in each chapter
- The story and characters. They were all very shallow.
- The lack of variety in boss fights. "How many helicopters does it take to kill 50 Cent?"
In all, Blood on the Sand is a fan service for all G-Unit fans out there. If you're not one of them, its just a generic shooter with tedious pacing.