50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

Early level and enemy design isn't exactly in either game's class, mind you: enemies appear from grey doors and take up obvious positions, rarely doing much besides dying co-operatively on the default setting, while environments are well-appointed but generic rundown streets and buildings. Swordfish makes good use of UE3 generally, though, with impressive fire effects and a frame-rate solidly above 30 - if not locked at 60 - for most of the time, and 50's likeness is very good, even if he sometimes has a puzzled-squirrel expression when he stands behind cover squinting out of the corner of his eye. Driving through the streets in one of the game's vehicle missions, while Tony Yayo rides shotgun (well, rides 50-cal), the draw distance is vast, and explosions convincing among the sun-blasted mud-brick houses, corrugated doors and wire fences, and the drive itself is comfortably executed, with some neat set-piece destruction and fewer pad-through-the-screen moments than, say, the Gears of War 2 ice-lake debacle.

And in some respects 50 is - perhaps fittingly - pretty old school. Besides the high-score mechanism, he has an actual health bar (sacrilege!), a Bullet Time mode (called Gangster Fire - you can stop making that face now), and a bunch of secret rooms and other trinkets to find. Apart from the hidden targets, there are stacks of cash-filled crates and ammo boxes to seek out by going the other way when you pop through a window or drop down off a ledge, and you even collect posters, some of which, wonderfully, are posters of 50 Cent himself. In addition to picking up guns on the go, you can also buy new ones at payphones, and they have copyright-dodging names like Desert Hawks and MC-10s.

I've been to a 50 Cent gig, you know. In-between cameos from the others in G-Unit (each of whom would sing about 30 seconds of some well-known song before it was shut down in a similarly copyright-skipping fashion by a ubiquitous gunshot sound effect), the whole thing was an advert for 50's albums, his film, his clothing and his food and drink sponsorship. It was amazingly brazen, but still somehow brilliant. 50 Cent: Bulletproof wasn't really much of either, but Blood on the Sand - despite the questionable setting - genuinely might be both, with a scoring system tied into tangible rewards, built around good old gaming ideas, and a sense of humour that belies the hip-hop game's usual bravado.

The weapon and level design could do with kicking up over the course, as by the time I left it there was a definite creeping ennui about another grey set of corridors, but interestingly this is not necessarily one to ignore on principle, and the promise of drop-in Xbox Live co-op is another plus point. We'll find out for sure later this month.