Uma maneira boa de resumir o Film Twitter é a seguinte: imagina um grupo de pessoas trocando umas mensagens, na realidade uns vereditos apriorísticos, sobre a última capa dos Cahiers, ou da Sight & Sound, ou da Cinema Scope (ou do Mubi, DocLisboa, Cinéma du Réel etc. etc.); ou do último filme de franquia bombadão de estúdio realizado por "autor", ou do último filme independente bombadão de pronta-entrega para festival internacional realizado por "autor", coisa que basicamente toda a cinefilia - sua paródia ou o seu simulacro, tanto faz - faz hoje.

Só que imagina que essa troca de mensagens se dá entre a Nina Lemos, o Chico Barney e o Casimiro.

Pronto: isso é o Film Twitter. E apesar da minha ojeriza absoluta pela sua figura, pelas suas opiniões e pelas suas realizações, eu lamento muito que a compra do Twitter pelo Elon Musk não vai realmente resultar em um fim do Film Twitter, assim como lamento que os macacos de auditório do Twitter que repudiam tão veementemente essa compra nem se darão conta de que ela foi simplesmente a coisa mais lógica que já aconteceu na história do mundo, de que o Twitter foi feito para o Elon Musk e vice-versa, e que a distância entre esses macacos de auditório - o que fazem e como fazem, o que pensam e como pensam, o que dizem e como dizem, o que acham e como acham -, o Elon Musk e gente que venera o Elon Musk (Monark, MBL, Joe Rogan, todo e qualquer cultor descabeçado do ultraneoliberalismo) é muito menor do que imaginam.

I first saw this game in Japan well over a year ago when scoping out the ones close to where I live. At first, I was utterly shocked that it even got a Japanese release, and was then lowkey dying to know if there was a Japanese dub in it. It took me another 17 or so months before I finally threw down the 300 whole yen to buy the thing (and be disappointed by its lack of a Japanese dub), but now I've played through it as well. It's not a terribly long game, and it took me around 6 hours to beat it on normal mode.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is, as the story goes, a game that was nearly finished before the 50 Cent name was slapped on it. While that may be totally unrelated to how the narrative plays out, the narrative is still as delightfully strange as it is simple. 50 Cent is doing a concert in the Middle East and after the show, when he goes to collect his 10 million bucks payment, the guy who owes it to him can't pay up because all his cash was stolen by gangsters. And not just any gangsters. SUPER bad tough gangsters. Instead, after some threatening from 50 Cent, he gives 50 Cent a priceless diamond-encrusted skull. That skull is shortly thereafter stolen by said SUPER gangs, and 50 goes on a quest to kill as many gangsters as he can to get his skull back.

While it is easy to dismiss the story as part of the never ending slew of post-Bush era modern military shooters, which it also definitely is part of, there is a certain beauty to just how 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand's story plays out. As an ego piece for 50 Cent, it is a quite genuinely fascinating look at just what an absolute bad ass he supposedly thinks of himself as despite being such an obviously terrible and amazingly petty person. There is a kind of Tommy Wiseau-esque charm to just how sincerely 50 Cent is portrayed in this, from how basically the entire soundtrack is his own music to even down to how you have a dedicated swearing button you can use to get more points when you kill an enemy. While I certainly wouldn't call the story good by any means, it is endlessly fascinating on many levels to me, and I kind of love it for that XD

The gameplay is a pretty solid co-op cover shooter, and that's really all there is to it. There's a point system, which is pretty neat for a shooter released within the last decade, and there are mid-stage mini-missions you can do within a certain amount of time for extra points, grenades, and super explodey bullets. You also get more points for quickly chaining together kills. There's money you can collect from fallen enemies and from boxes around the stages, but from the point system to the money collecting from enemies, the game really emphasizes a speedy and aggressive approach to combat, which is pretty fun~. You can use the money in stages to buy more taunts to throw with your dedicated swearing button, more animations for your QTE up-close melee kills, and of course more and bigger guns. It's not setting the world on fire, sure, but between the license and how well put together the game is generally, it's a cool way to mix up the giant bag of modern military shooters that inundate last gen's library.

The presentation is equal parts fascinating (as explained earlier) and grating. The game looks graphically alright for the time, but some of the character models look a little odd in cutscenes. The main female protagonist looks especially broken, and I'd even go as far as to say that her motion capture data was borked and they just had to go forward with what they had regardless XP. The soundtrack being basically entirely 50 Cent's music is kinda soul-draining given the game's 5+ hour runtime, as it really removes any kind of musical pacing to the action and it makes the game feel even more like "distilled video game with 50 Cent added" than it already is. I can't really comment on the quality of the hip hop, it not being a genre I have any familiar with, but I did get a huge belly laugh when I heard one of the songs rhyme "nickname" with "dick game" XD

As far as the Japanese version of the game is concerned, it's a really half-assed localization, and that also kinda adds to the charm for me. There's no dub, sure, but there ARE subtitles, and those subtitles are absolutely hilarious in just how little they capture anything unique about how 50 Cent & co talk. Sure, it's' plenty hilarious the first time you see a subtitle say "Fifty-san" or "Cent-san" (translating "Mr. Fifty" or "Mr. Cent"), but just how much of a normal irritated guy the subs make him sound is just so funny to me. I know Japanese doesn't really have swears like most languages, but just how toned down all the "motherfucker"-esque lines that 50 spits are add so much to the oddball charm of this game that I'm still sorta surprised at how well that enhances the overall experience XD

Verdict: Recommended. You can probably find this game for pretty cheap these days, and if you want a pretty solid third person shooter with a pretty damn odd theme, this is a really good fit. To yet again use a phrase I say a lot, it's not setting anyone's world on fire, but the odd theme and competent gameplay mesh together to make something quite memorable. When I mentioned I beat this game in the Slack chat, AJ mentioned that he would've never thought I'd play this game. I retort to that in that weird games are suuuuper up my alley, even for genres I don't often enjoy, and this completely fits the bill X3

It's hard to hate on it.

What would've been a fairly bog-standard shooter gets some mileage out of a surprisingly in-depth scoring-system. Hidden collectibles, mini-challenges, money for purchasing new guns, score-chaining to earn bullet-time and power up your handgun with temporary one-hit kill bullets, a fairly strict grading-system at the end of each stage; all these things give you plenty to think about. My only actual complaint is that some checkpoints are before some slow-walking sections, but it's not a big deal.

Took about 4 hours for my one clear on Hard, but this game was designed to be replayed.

It's ok. 2.5/5

Played on RPCS3 at 4k 240fps.

This game is so unapologetically videogamey, I love it. Basically a third person cover shooter with a more arcadey approach. It's so arcadey that using covers is a mere suggestion most of the time, the game wants you to play direct and aggressive with a sort of kill combo system that rewards you with higher scores the more stuff you do, like killing with an explosive barrel, a double kill with an RPG, or a melee execution, even cursing! Yeah, there's a dedicated button to curse, which multiplies your combo points with an specific percentage depending on the level of slurs you have, because yes, you can upgrade your slurs. In a “shop” at the payphone. This game is similar to Resident Evil 4 in a way, you go around smashing crates that give you money to buy stuff (weapons, melee execution animations and slur packs) at the payphone, which acts pretty much like the merchant from RE4.

You’re given four different slots for different types of weapons: Pistol, SMG/Shotgun, Rifle/LMG and RPG/Sniper. And yeah, you can quickscope in the 50 Cent game. Each slot has a unique colour: The SMG/Shotgun slot is blue, the Rifle/LMG slot is yellow and the RPG/Sniper slot is red (I don’t remember the pistol slot having any colour), and the funny thing is, enemies are normally dressed in one of those colours, so you always know which kind of gun they’re using. This is useful because that way you know which weapons are better to waste ammo with and what enemies you should deal with first. The red guys have either Rocket Launchers or Sniper Rifles, so maybe you should take care of them first and then the rest. Although later in the game, you start fighting enemies which wear different colours, which means that either they are stronger/have more life or that they throw grenades/molotovs, maybe even both. In short, the game gives enemies different levels of priority in a very distinctive way to not confuse the player. This helps establish the wacky and videogamey tone the game has.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is honest with its intentions. It just wants the player to have a fun time. Sure, you could accuse it of excusing genocide in the Middle East with “it’s just for the funsies”, but I think it’s just playing along with the trends on the videogame industry at the time in a sort of jokey and parodic way. Even then, Fifty is pretty indifferent to all this situation, he just wants his Diamond Skull back. While every other game hid patriotic and militaristic propaganda behind run-of-the-mill Shooters, Blood on the Sand is about 50 getting his payday and it reminds you constantly about that so you know he's not better (or that he's cooler, depending on how you look at it) than the people he is killing without hesitation, you're not meant to idolize the guy although this is pretty much a love letter to himself. He just wants the skull back. All of this presented in a sort of self-parodic way, because after all, you're not meant to take it seriously. The story itself is pretty simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything else. “Bitch took ma skull” is all you need, really. I kid you not, an entire betrayal and character arc starts and ends in the span of like 30 to 45 minutes. You’re not here for the story, you’re here to chain sick kill combos and suplex terrorists.

This is a game I wish came back at least on a remaster/port to modern systems. This is the kind of experience we’ve lost since the PS4/XOne days, no more mid-budget wacky and (sort of) experimental games like these anymore. I wish companies produced more shorter, mid-budget games where the devs are let to do whatever they wanted like this, because 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is actually a really fun game! And although I’ve been praising it all this time, it does have a lot of flaws shared with a lot of Third Person Cover Shooters. You know, extreme linearity, uninspired enemies, tedious boss battles, yada yada, you know the drill. But still, if you can get your hands on 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, this is going to be 10x times more fun, honest and entertaining than most of the Third Person Shooters at the time and still to this day.

"Nice view for a shitty ass dump"

Blood on the Sand is perfect B-Movie game. The chaotic spirit of just shredding through hoards of enemies while 50 quips the absolute dumbest lines of dialogue is something everyone should experience.

The year is 2022 and I got 1000g in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand in 4K HDR on my Series X. Nature is healing.

50 Centavos envelheceu mal ou bem?

Bom, economicamente falando envelheceu muito mal, afinal de contas em 2010 ou 2009 havia barracas vendendo salgadinhos que hoje só arrumamos por 2 reais ou 3, e olha que o tamanho cortado na metade ainda... Ah perai, eu confundi, não é desse 50 centavos que a gente tá falando 😳

Jogos de filmes era uma coisa muito popular desde a geração do PS2 até a do PS3 e 360, tão popular que títulos assim era algo bem saturado, porém esses jogos passaram batido pra mim na geração do ps3, e como atualmente, estou revisitando a biblioteca desta geração, não podia deixar de fora esse jogão que eu olhava a capa e ignorava.

50 Cent blood on the sand traz ao jogador uma experiência bem justa e equilibrada de um TPS, diria que bem maluca também, tu se envolve em um monte de explosões, tiro pra todo lado e ação do início ao fim, e o jogo tem a medida certa pra você não enjoar dele, dura por aí umas 6 horas ou 4, bem curtinho mesmo.

Gostei muito da forma rápida que o jogo conta a historinha dele e eu não sei se esse título tem conexão com o do PS2, só sei que achei uma aventurazinha boa e tem uma pegada PUXADASSA dos filmes de ação maluca americano, única coisa que me incomodou um pouco nesse jogo foi o exagero de números na HUD dele, ficou algo muito poluído e que me incomodou um pouco, por isso não darei nota máxima pra ele.

Ele tem também combos repetidos e um jeitão meio travado de seguir com o rumo do jogo, me lembrando muito até dos clássicos de PS2, aqui você tem fases diferentes também, uma hora ou outra o nosso protagonista tá de carro, helicóptero, e tudo isso com muita ação envolvida.

Se for jogar esta bomba atualmente, saiba que ele é um jogo que envelheceu um pouquinho mal, tanto no gráfico quanto em gameplay, então se prepara aí pra ficar um pouco incomodado no início com os controles.

An unintentional period piece.

Fair warning, I'm gonna be talking about the grim shit that happened during the war on terror. I'm also gonna be talking about 50 Cent's career. These two are intertwined.

I doubt there are too many people using this website who are young enough to have completely missed the meteoric rise of 50 Cent, but I'd be remiss to not make sure that everyone gets a primer. At the turn of the millennium, the golden age of gangsta rap was giving way to the bling era; what had become conventional in the late-80s to mid-90s was rapidly becoming less popular and less profitable than the revival of alternative hip hop. Of course, this didn't stop some artists from keeping their old sound in the face of new trends. Whether it was because they were stubborn, incapable of changing, or confident enough that they could keep selling exactly the way that they were, a genre shift will never be enough to completely unseat people from making what they want. 50 Cent had been making mixtapes for years, getting some notoriety from flipping the beats that other rappers had laid their voices on. He wasn't about to shift gears. 50 Cent kept his sound the same, and was rewarded handsomely: his debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, went 9x Platinum. The Massacre came out two years later and went 6x Platinum.

That was 2005, and it was the last time 50 Cent was relevant.

Blood on the Sand released in February of 2009.

A significant part of 50 Cent's fall is that, frankly speaking, he’s kind of a shit rapper. His style was already out by the early 2000s, and it’s only thanks to a fortuitous pick-up by Shady Records that you’ve heard of him. He’s not talentless, nor was he ever; his mixtape work prior to his studio debut is still good at its worst, and GRoDT is a solid-enough record (as much as I’ll get called an RYM backpacker for not saying it's outstanding). But 50 doesn’t really have any pen game to speak of. It’s more like crayon game. The guy writes like a fifth grader. The first bar off the first track in his debut album rhymes “off my chest” with “off my chest”. There’s another not even three minutes later where he drops the line “I'm the boss on this boat, you can call me skipper. The way I turn the money over, you should call me Flipper”. Christ. 50 Cent has a lot of friends in some really high places, but there’s a reason that Curtis couldn’t get certified in the year that Graduation went 5x Platinum; people were tired of him after less than a decade after his mainstream breakthrough. All of the Slim Shady and Obie Trice and Snoop Dogg features in the world couldn’t stem the tide that people like Kanye and Lil’ Wayne were creating, and 50’s monotone flows, GarageBand default beats, and garbage lyricism were reliquary.

But 50 Cent’s relationships are what propelled him, and they helped him build a legacy that he’s still controlling to this day. He made it big by starting feuds with virtually every other rapper he could on How to Rob, only delving deeper into his many, many beefs as he got involved deeper with Shady Records, taking up their fights as an associate. He turned getting shot for running his mouth into his armor — you become feared and respected in equal measure if the guy that puts nine bullets in you winds up dead before you do. He created a multimedia empire of television shows, of vodka, of luxury underwear, of investments in South African palladium mines.

And of video games.

Blood on the Sand originally had nothing to do with 50 Cent, and you can tell. It was meant to be a tie-in with a Jason Bourne sequel series written after the death of author Robert Ludlum, but the television show that was also set to release at the same time got cancelled before it could leave production. This left developer Swordfish Studios holding the bag; this is basically what happened with Croteam when they made Serious Sam 3. Swordfish had sunk two years of dev time into making their Covert-One game, and now they had nothing they could do with the prototypes.

Enter Vivendi Games, who order a sequel to 50 Cent: Bulletproof.

It's obvious while playing Blood on the Sand that 50 Cent was just kind of dropped into a product that already existed before he got involved. You have all of these wide, open vistas, with sparkling bloom effects casting rays of light down onto the sand-bleached stones. Dilapidated malls and bombed-out highways serve as the backdrops for stop-and-pop cover shooter segments, tearing up the surroundings with heavy machine gun fire. So much of this game visually tries to tell a story of beautiful landscapes, contrasting against the war-torn buildings and roads of this unnamed Middle Eastern country. It’s ripe for some gruff-voiced American special ops player character to glibly comment on war being hell and how the American invasion of this land is the only way to save these wayward people, mowing them down all the while.

50 Cent doesn’t give a fuck about any of that. 50 Cent just wants his fucking skull.

Blood on the Sand is honest. It's a puff piece for 50 Cent. It's a product that exists solely for the purpose of boosting his image and providing him with another brand tie-in he can point to as a marker of success. 50 Cent doesn't have any poetic musings about the nature of man or if he's the real monster for slaughtering all of these inexplicably Serbian and Slovenian goons. 50 Cent thinks this place is a shithole and he wants to go home as soon as he can get his $10 million jewel-encrusted skull back. The non-fictionalized 50 is on record saying that he loves the game because it shows him jumping out of helicopters and because his model has huge muscles.

The game attempts to answer the question of why 50 Cent is somewhere in the Middle East (the Covert-One books out at the time don't take place in the region, so there's basically zero clue which country this is meant to be) by saying that he's there to play a concert. We have to keep in mind that fiction, unlike reality, is designed from top to bottom to be experienced by an outside viewer. The in-universe justification is that he's there to make money. The real-world reasoning is because, in the year 2009, you're just kind of expected to set your game in the Middle East. They were easy "bad guys". Just because Obama was president doesn't mean shit. Just because the torture of political dissidents in Abu Ghraib was known for half a decade before this doesn't mean shit. Just because it cost untold trillions of dollars and a million lives doesn't mean shit. They — capital-T, bold-italics — did 9/11, so it's all fair game.

But this is all in service of making 50 look cool. Not of anything else. You're meant to watch him gun down five guys with a machine gun while the word MASSACRE takes up a third of the screen and and think "wow, this guy's a badass". You get Gangsta Fire slow-mo and 50 Cent bonus points to unlock music videos for killing quickly, because it makes him look cool. You have three separate helicopter boss fights because 50 Cent's son thought it would make him look cool. You listen to a rotation of background tracks that all sound the same and can only be differentiated in a firefight by whether 50 shouts "I run New York!" or "My gun go off!" at the end of the chorus. You have a dedicated taunt button that you can upgrade to make 50 shout progressively more profane things at his foes for bonus points. Because, you know, it makes him look cool. I think the target demographic for this game was 50 Cent.

Unsurprisingly, 50 Cent and the rest of the G-Unit do a fairly poor job of acting as themselves. Perhaps more surprisingly, everyone save for Lance Reddick kind of sucks in this. The final boss cycles through a Texan accent, a South African accent, a British RP accent, and at one point what sounds like a Chinese accent all in the span of a single helicopter battle. Tony Yayo just...whines all the time? Like, he doesn't do much besides complain about how much he hates being in a Middle Eastern warzone, which, y'know, valid gripe. The other members of the G-Unit are no longer on speaking terms with 50 Cent. That's not relevant to the rest of this paragraph, but I did all of this research into 50 Cent, so I had to mention it somewhere.

The story is nonsense, but it couldn't ever be anything else. 50 Cent just wants his fucking skull. Everything else is tertiary. The "love interest" crosses you, then double-crosses the villains with a story about how they're holding her family captive, and then triple-crosses 50 one final time by revealing that she has no family right at the finish line. 50 Cent quips that she's a "crazy bitch" and that's how he likes his women, and then blows her up with a rocket launcher. Your concert promoter/handler/blackmail victim inevitably turns on you — "trust no one," says the arms dealer, advice which 50 ignores three separate times before the credits roll — and just dies unceremoniously in a generic gunfight. You can blast him the moment you're out of the cutscene and get a 25,000 point bonus for doing it in under thirty seconds. This game is bordering on a work of deconstructive genius.

Blood on the Sand is funny, because Blood on the Sand is quaint. It revels in its own selfishness; the war on terror as an aesthetic to push a real guy as being tough, completely bereft of having anything to say other than "damn, 50 Cent is cool". It's almost refreshing to see something so concerned with itself that it's completely unbothered by its own implications. This is a better condemnation of the war on terror and the American culture that spawned around it than Spec Ops: The Line. Hit that big-ass ramp, Fiddy.

This is the good karma version of Rogue Warrior.