G-Unit: Free Yayo E3 2005 First Look

We got some insight into G-Unit: Free Yayo, the mobile game from Zingy that follows the escapades of the G-Unit crew as it attempt to free missing member Tony Yayo from prison. G-Unit (short for Gorilla Unit) comprises rappers 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, and Young Buck. It's been a force collectively--and its members singularly--in American rap over the past few years. There's been some controversy surrounding the real-life imprisonment of Yayo, and "Free Yayo" has emerged as both a slogan and a brand name, appearing on T-shirts and in the lyrics of G-Unit songs. Notably, during the 2003 Grammys, Eminem appeared onstage wearing a "Free Yayo" shirt, thus bringing the rapper's plight to national attention.

G-Unit for mobile tackles this somewhat serious subject in a lighthearted manner by positioning the story in a dystopic future, where evil record label executives have joined together, taken over the country, and sent villains in the form of robots after the G-Unit crew. The robots have captured Yayo and imprisoned him, so it's your objective to bust him out. The game's style is quite unique, featuring a colorful cel-shaded style that looks like it's straight out of a comic book. This works well for the game, which is not going to be particularly violent, despite the potential for violence within the story. Instead, it posits the members of the G-Unit crew as almost superhero-esque through the combination of its visual style and story. This works well to make the game simultaneously serious and lighthearted, because despite being cartoonish, the graphics are seedy and dark, in a comic noir style.

Gameplay will be extremely diverse, although it will all focus around shooting of some sort. We saw an early version of the game on a very low-end handset, and it seemed to be running quite nicely. There's potential for quite a number of different gameplay objectives, but we saw side-scrolling car combat that made use of parallax scrolling, 3D car combat where you must dodge enemy fire as well as return some on your own, and a sniper level where the objective was to take out one particular person in the middle of a crowd.

Zingy seems to be intent on bringing fans of G-Unit a ton of different bonus unlockables, such as ringtones and wallpapers, and it's making sure the unlockable treats in the game are completely unique from any you'd find on the Web. Thankfully, Zingy is very confident with the brand, and it's making heavy use of it in the game. One of the best ways Zingy's doing this is through voice samples from members of the G-Unit themselves. Although the game will feature original music, voice content will appear constantly throughout it.

Although it's not scheduled for release until late summer or early fall, G-Unit is coming along quite nicely. The visual style works very well, and Zingy's making good use of a very strong license.