50 cent bulletproof
At the beginning of this action title, 50 Cent gets an urgent page from an old cellmate, K-Dog, so he rounds up his G-Unit group — Lloyd Banks, Young Buck and Tony Yayo, each modeled after their real-life counterparts — to find and rescue him. It turns out to be an ambush, however, and at the end of the first level, K-Dog is killed and 50 Cent gets shot nine times and is left for dead. Interestingly, 50 Cent was shot nine times in real life in 2000.
The rest of the game sees 50 Cent and the G-Unit "soldiers" seeking revenge as they take on the most dangerous crime families in New York's underworld.
While cameos from Eminem and Dr. Dre serve as an extra treat for rap fans, the story goes nowhere fast. The game play is average. You control 50 Cent from a third-person perspective, as he shoots bad guys with a number of different weapons. Fiddy also has two-dozen "counter-kill" moves, which are ultraviolent attacks in slow-motion.
50 Cent can also grab a nearby enemy to use as a human shield or roughly interrogate him for information.
Bulletproof" is rated "Mature" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board so it's not suitable for players under 17.
Some puzzle-solving is required, which usually involves calling on a G-Unit member to use his skills at certain points in the game: Banks can pick locks; Buck is the weapons specialist; and Yayo is the demolitions expert.
This gritty adventure is reasonably easy to control, but the action grows stale after a short while. If it didn't involve 50 Cent and his G-Unit posse, Bulletproof would play like a hundred other action games available today.
The game boasts more than four CDs worth of music, including a selection of exclusive tracks and remixes, but the soundtrack feels more repetitive than it should. A good idea, though, is using found money in the game to "purchase" new songs for the soundtrack; a number of music videos can also be unlocked, but they look grainy during playback.
Bulletproof could've been a lot worse for a game based on a rap star, but it could be much better as it borrows too heavily from other third-person action games without adding anything new to the genre. At best, it's a weekend rental for devoted 50 Cent fans.