this game suks
A few missions have you working alongside the G-Unit soldiers, or other allies, like the dirty cop, Detective McVicar (played by Eminem) or the grizzled war veteran-turned-gun fiend, Grizz (Dr. Dre). In situations where they're just shooting the bad guys, your AI-controlled partners do a decent job. Considering how uninteresting the shooting is, it's often easier to just sit back and let them do most of the shooting, since they seemingly never die. But when it comes time to navigate tight hallways, for instance, the AI falls apart. We ran into a situation where Lloyd Banks--the lock-picker of the crew--was attempting to run into a room to pick open a safe while we were attempting to get out, which blocked us into a corner. The only answer? A couple of shots to the face got Banks to move out of the way.
When it comes to licensed products like this, the gameplay sometimes seems secondary. In this case, the developers have attempted to pack the game with other 50 Cent-related stuff in an attempt to make it more appealing to fans of the artist. Bulletproof contains a ton of songs from 50 and the rest of the G-Unit, and there are a handful of music videos on the disc as well. You'll have to unlock them using money earned during missions. Once you've done so, you can add the unlocked songs to a playlist. However, the game doesn't incorporate any of its music well. It attempts to have an interactive music system that plays low-key tracks when things are quiet and switches over to louder, angrier music when you set it off. But enemies often come one or two at a time, so the game seems like it's constantly crossfading back and forth between a few tracks. Plus, the songs restart after a load screen, so when you're going in and out of buildings between missions, you'll hear the first 20 seconds of a track over and over again. The unlockable videos are a nice touch, but they're poorly compressed and look grainy and pixelated. If you're a fan looking for "the ultimate 50 Cent experience," you're probably going to be twice as disappointed as someone who's just after a decent shooter.
Graphically, there's one aspect of the game that stands out. The character models for all of the big-name characters are really sharp. 50 looks especially menacing, but the rest of the G-Unit, Dre, and Eminem all look convincing and animate fairly well. The bad guys don't have it so good, but they still look decent. The environments in the game, however, are an ugly, dark mess. You'll go through burned-out buildings, sewers, and train tunnels--all sorts of places that will often be too dark for you to make out objects like walls. When you can see, you'll run into some rather ugly-looking textures. The Xbox version of the game looks slightly better than its PS2 counterpart, but not enough to recommend one version over the other.