It also has some parallels with the gun and melee combat of Activision's True Crime, but shares none of its larger open structure. 50's talents as a jet-propelled hurdler are under-valued by his fans.Īll of which linearity means that Bulletproof is closely related to Max Payne and vastly distant to San Andreas. Dudes with guns shoot at you you shoot back. But he goes along with it all anyway, because there are faceless bad dudes to kill, and because there's clearly something going on that anyone vaguely motivated would clearly want to get to the bottom of. As the player you are given few clues as to what is going on, and neither does 50 seem to care what he's getting into his need is purely to make someone pay for his discomfort. So, in shades of Rambo, it's personal despite the apparently impersonal nature of all 50 Cent's challenges. Initially 50 Cent is out to help his homies, but the real reason for wanting revenge is that he himself gets shot in the back by persons unknown. This is exactly how Bulletproof plays out.

These new game avatars are anti-heroes whose raison d'etre is American-brand cool, perhaps cast against a backdrop of sweet revenge. It's a world in which their street style puts them closer to gritty action hero than mere drug dealer with a hint of pistol. These new fantasies aren't concerned with cowboys or space opera, but with the idea of an alternate reality where the gangsta rap icons actually inhabit the fictions of rap lyrics. Bulletproof's 50 Cent is an action hero of the Vin Diesel school, with ultra-violence acting as an aperitif for the main course of cartoon gun-toting.įollowing in the Fila-falls of a large swathe of contemporary games, Bulletproof is about fantasy fulfilment for the hip-hop generation. 50 only occasionally gets distracted by puzzle-solving, with some buttons to press here and there, elevators to activate, power switches to throw, and so on. It's heavy with cut-scene gloss, but the muscle beneath the elegantly tattooed exterior is a third-person, gun-heavy action sequence.

It's on this basis that we have to discuss games like 50 Cent: Bulletproof, a game that is yet another cousin in that family of games where violence is everything.

If it is possible to kill inventively and stylishly, and for us to feel that we are responsible for that moment of visceral thrill, then the experience is vastly more interesting, and can be recommended with the connoisseur's expert nod. It is, in part, our own imaginations that need to be exercised when engaged in digital combat. Instead we are concerned with a process, the feedback of violent images to controlling hands and thinking minds. Of course the same could be said of cinema-lovers, but videogames aren't eulogised purely on the basis of how the violence looks. One of the peculiar predicaments of the habitual gamer is that we become connoisseurs of simulated violence.

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