50 Cent: Blood On The Sand Might Just Be A Cult Classic Shooter

thegamer.com:

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was an undeniable product of its time. The third-person shooter from Swordfish Studios and THQ was loud, crass, vulgar, and rather offensive in how it depicts Curtis Jackson invading an unnamed Middle Eastern country in search of a bitch who stole his crystal skull. It’s cool, they were playing a gig there beforehand.

Buildings were demolished, terrorists were gunned down, and civilians were caught in the crossfire of a conflict that was clearly riffing on real world politics at the time. It was laughably insensitive, but it never took itself seriously and was way better than it had any right to be. 13 years later, it might even be a hidden cult classic that deserved far more respect.

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Or maybe not, because it’s both ridiculous and half-assed in ways that many shooters of the era tended to be, yet there’s something delightfully honest about its celebrity origins that make Blood on the Sand so damn hard to hate. In recent years it has become a meme of sorts, with hardcore fans repeating lines of dialogue and poking fun at the game’s absurdity whenever it comes up in conversation. I have friends who will still cry foul at the bitch who robbed them of their crystal skull when we’re drinking at parties, and I’m right there with them as we reminisce about a game from our teenage years that has aged so, so badly.

But I still love it, and wish there were more ways to play Blood on The Sand today that didn’t involve hunting down a physical copy. It’s backward compatible on current Xbox consoles, but requires a disc because the digital version was pulled years ago due to copyright issues. The soundtrack is just a