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Well, we thought this was going to be the worst game ever. And for a while it is, with 50 Cent running around with his 'G-Unit Soldiers' shouting about making enemies, getting peoples' backs and waving guns around on the street like the game's set in Somalia. It's like a *Halo: 50 Cent download pack, where Master Chief peels off his armour to reveal he's actually the bullet-ridden hip-hop superstar.

You already know the backstory. The game starts with you realising that something "smells like a setup" and very shortly afterwards leads to 50 Cent getting shot. Nine times! He lives, as you might be able to guess, and every bullet misses his brain and vocal chords. The action that follows seems to be based on 50 Cent's wildest fantasies, the ones where he's an invincible robot from the future, dodging laser tripwires and being allowed to shoot hundreds of people for fun.

It's about getting revenge in the most violent possible way. These games are always about revenge, with the hat-wearing hard man going from crib to crib (that's hip-hop for 'house to house') pretty much just shooting and launching rockets at generic enemies. 50 gets his revenge by shooting thousands of people, millions of times. Our office is going to look like a slaughterhouse when he reads the score at the end of this review.

While you shoot your way along, though, the enemies actually put up a very good fight. We weren't expecting that. Obviously we thought this would be some sort of abysmal Christmas cash-in that's barely playable - but no! The other guys you fight show some of the best artificial intelligence we've encountered, dodging, weaving, retreating and seeking out cover, forcing you to actually think while firing endless rounds of bullets in the vague direction of everything.

The thing is, once you've got all the excitement of 'being' 50 Cent out of the way, and after you've had a chat with Eminem and, the other bloke, what's his name? Oh yeah, Dr Dre, we're always forgetting about Dr Dre. Once you've done that, all you do is shoot and... what you've already done a million times before.

You activate switches. You find switches. You search for things and do all the other usual things you've been doing in games for the last however-many-years-old you are - only with more swearing and cussing, and under a constant assault from various 'rival crews'.

In one particularly boring and soul-destroying sequence, 50 has to infiltrate a mansion. It's fun, you run up through the garden and mow down lots of people while swearing at (and with) your G-Unit gang, but then you enter the building. The moment you see the elevator your heart sinks - yes, your next challenge is to find a power supply to activate the elevator, which is hardly cutting-edge videogame design.

So off you tootle (that's hip-hop speak for 'run') to find a security room to activate the elevator (that's hip-hop speak for 'lift'), so you and your ultra-hard mother-to-the-F-ing G-Unit soldiers run around some corridors trying to find a switch to turn on a lift. Not a very cool thing for Mr Rock Hard Hip-Hop Man to be seen doing, but hey. It may have a modern hip-hop soundtrack and lots of really cool swearing, but the actual game that lies behind it was already old and dull when hip-hop was invented. And that was like in 1978 or something.

What is decent about the plot is not what actually happens - that's some boring old toss about revenge and gangs that we can't even remember - but the way it's told. It is, believe it or not, actually quite amusing and just a little bit funny. Eminem does a pretty good turn as a cop, the doctor who fixes you up has some nice lines, and there's a whole load of visual gags packed into the direction of the game's storytelling cut-scenes. If you can live with the swearing and violence it's all quite a good laugh.

But the bottom line is this is a relatively pretty game that does nothing new. If you want to run around in a pretend gang firing machine-guns non-stop while calling people "pussies" and listening to rejected 50 Cent album tracks, this is for you. If you don't like the sound of that because you're normal and well adjusted, fire nine bullets into this piece o' generic rubbish and make sure at least one of them goes through the disc.

1. Looks loads better than you'd expect - solid, chunky characters and blood going, like, everywhere!
2. Loads of 50 Cent music and new stuff from other members of his G-Unit entourage of musical geniuses.
3. Comedy cut-scenes and dialogue help give the game an entertaining edge, despite all the gore and swearing.

1. Some extraordinary tedious moments of play - searching for access points and activating lifts? Boring!
2. And when you're not performing basic puzzle tasks, you're just shooting everything. It's not particularly varied.

Bulletproof looks nice, but is boring and old-fashioned to play. It's dumb, a bit stupid and not much fun. Miss.