Not a sequel to Bulletproof

Finally got to play this after 18 years, thanks to the recompilation efforts by nlwstein (who also helped me troubleshoot, bless his soul).

As a teenager, having played the flawed, but wildly ambitious 50 Cent: Bulletproof, I was sure this game was gonna be an improvement on it. Not having a PS3 or Xbox360 at the time, I was unable to verify my suspicions, but it sure did seem to get a much better reception than its predecessor. Even now it seems to possess a kind of cult status, which Bulletproof never managed to attain. So, when I got a chance to finally play it, this was one of my dream wishlist entries, thus naturally I was excited.

My excitement quickly turned to disappointment. While it is true that this game is much more polished and less flawed in its design, it is also mind-numbingly simplistic, bordering on being a glorified shooting gallery. I know I call a lot of games linear, but this is one of the most linear shooters I've ever played. You can't jump, can't crouch, locations are nearly claustrophobic tunnels, even when they're technically outside. In my 2 hours with the game, I once got lost because, although I knew the location I had to go to, I couldn't find the path that wasn't blocked by invisible walls or arbitrary borders. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Stranglehold, where I also struggled with mazy tunnels, despite the game being super linear.

That's really not the only comparison to Stranglehold. It's equally as flashy and assaults you with UI elements akin to an arcade game. However, unlike Stranglehold, the physics are almost non-existent and there's no depth to the combat whatsoever. You got 4 weapon slots, the switching between which summons this gigantic interface to the center of the screen and obscures your view. Every slot holds a specific type of weapon: pistol, long-range, close-range and special. Within the same type, the difference between weapons is almost negligible, except for specials, which are either explosive weapons or sniper rifles, each of which are only really useful in specific cases (e.g. fighting a helicopter boss).

You can hide behind cover, but, much like in Bulletproof, I recommend against it, though there it was because the system was undercooked, whereas here it's just pointless and makes the gameplay even more boring than it is.

You can melee your opponents, but that launches a QTE-sequence that lasts several seconds and gets canceled if you mess it up, which just leads to hilarious results. For example, the QTE might consist of you stabbing the enemy 4 times, but if you can fuck it up after the third stab and it's like nothing happened. You can repeat this endlessly. Bulletproof's melee attacks were kinda pointless because of how long they took, but here they decided to make them annoying also.

The one stand-out feature here is slow-mo, but it's more of a bonus thing than a foundational mechanic, because it only replenishes after you kill enemies. Meaning you can't reliably use it the way you did in Max Payne or the aforementioned Stranglehold.

That's it really. That's all there is to it. Just move from encounter to encounter and fight enemies. Bulletproof had so much more going on: using enemies or objects as human-shields, dual-wielding different weapons, a more sophisticated aiming system, etc. Plus, you had tons of unlockables, a cool hub area, videos, more music, a phone that you could use to call other characters, not to mention the story was written by Terence Winter and the cutscenes were much more stylish and cinematic. Blood on the Sand is really bare-bones in comparison.

It might as well be a rail shooter. At least in that case it wouldn't create false expectations.