Xbox 360 Fanboy

In an interview with Xbox World 360 magazine (as reported by OXM UK), the producer of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Julian Waddows, stated that he hopes Fiddy's new game will do for shooters what Burnout did for the racing genre. He adds further that he wants the game to do, "What Diablo did for RPGs. We wanted to take all that makes the genre fun and exaggerate it." An over-the-top, exaggerated shooter? Oh no, that's never been done before. Seriously though, we kid Blood on the Sand. After all, we certainly wouldn't wish any game to be bad. In theory, there's nothing wrong with Waddows hopes. We just hope that his hopes come to fruition. Otherwise, we'll probably just lose hope altogether.

Editor's note: Since we're on the subject, let's get someone started on porting Diablo II to XBLA, mkay?

This should allay everyone's fears about 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. According to TeamXbox, a member of 50 Cent's G-Unit crew, Tony Yayo, has been quoted as saying that Blood on the Sand is "looking as good as Gears of War." Lofty words to be sure. Of course, given the source, we're a little skeptical. Fortunately, Yayo doesn't seem to be the only one impressed with the game, as TeamXbox also reports that Epic's own Mark Rein told CVG he was "blown away" by the game last year. In fact, even our own Terrence Stasse managed to enjoy the game during a recent Sierra event.

Who knows, maybe Blood on the Sand will make us all forget about Bulletproof (or die tryin').

When the first 50 Cent game was released, it wasn't exactly to critical praise, and many didn't think that it would be anything other than a footnote in the history of licensed games. Surprisingly, the game sold over a million copies and has a sequel well into development. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is following in the footsteps of its prequel with its focus on the characters and gunplay, but everything else seems to have been left behind. Despite the commercial success of the first game, it's reported that 50 Cent was unhappy with the first game, and wanted an entirely new team to work on the second game. Hence, Swordfish Studios took the reins on development, with the goal to create a game that was easy to pick up and play in a fun and arcady fashion.

Our first impression upon being shown to the seats was "Wow, this looks a lot like Gears." And not just because both games are running Unreal Engine 3. The base gameplay of Blood on the Sand is almost an exact copy of Gears in every way, right down to the cover mechanic and melee activation. The movement is faster overall (to keep up the arcade feel the devs are shooting for) and you're definitely not in as much danger as you are in Gears. While there is a cover mechanic that allows for crouching, firing from behind cover, peeking around corners, and everything else you would expect out of a Gears clone, it's mostly unnecessary as the bulletproof vest your character wears is MUCH tougher than it looks (at least on the default difficulty).

Real-time-strategy isn't exactly the largest, most well rounded genre on the 360, and while we have seen Lord of the Rings and C&C3 do relatively well on console, there still isn't any kind of breakout hit. While the appropriateness of RTS to consoles is debatable (as is the likelihood of there ever being a breakout hit) the games that choose to go that route are nevertheless getting better. World in Conflict: Soviet Assault will be the next big real-time-strategy release on 360 and it improves on the console-specific tweaks made to past console RTS games.

First and foremost, the game's camera is not controlled like a typical RTS, where the angle is set, and the camera only zooms in or out. The camera is controlled exactly like a first-person-shooter, meaning that the player can aim the camera parallel to the ground if they so wish. It also means that any players who are coming from console FPS play will be able to feel at home much faster than they otherwise might.