Eidos’ latest game is a hip hop shooter that starts out with Freeze. He’s trying to leave the gangster life behind, but after one bad deal he’s now hunted down by his former gang members. You’ll also jump into the role of Officer Williams, a street smart cop. He’s from the exact opposite world of Freeze. Of course the story connects them, but most gamers probably won’t give the cliché story a second look.
Sadly, the story might be the best thing 25 to Life has going for it except for the soundtrack. The game is really a third person shooter, that’s incredibly repetitive and downright boring. Every level has you shoot your way through as many people as you can as you run through an urban maze. You can fire your weapon with the R1 trigger button, but you have to aim manually right analog stick. There’s plenty of ammo around so you don’t have to worry about carefully shooting your targets. You’ll probably need to keep shooting too because there is no real sense of hit detection in the game. Whether you shoot an enemy at point blank range or from a far it still takes a couple of shots to successfully dispatch a rival gang member. There are a couple of different types of firearms that range from handguns to assault rifles and secondary weapons like grenades.
The only strategy to employ in 25 to Life is to be trigger happy. You can duck behind cover, but the area you can see when you lean out is way to narrow for cover to be really useful. But why even bother with defending yourself when levels are littered with so many health packs that you can save them for later. One of the strangest problems with 25 to Life is how partner characters are used in the game. Early on when Freeze is robbing a bank you’ll get your first experience with an “ally”. Instead of helping you by letting lose a blaze of bullets for your escape, he can actually shoot Freeze too. While this might be realistic, dying at the hands of your partner is just frustrating. Eidos must have noticed this problem during quality control and they could have easily fixed it by not letting friendly fire damage the player.
There are some side missions to achieve like finding areas to tag or avoid getting killed, which try to keep players interested. However, most players won’t want to replay the drab levels. Instead playing online is a more interesting choice. Eidos tries to take the concept of turf wars and mix it with cops versus robbers. 25 to Life offers a pretty decent amount of character customization options. You can alter your characters clothes and design a graffiti tag to show online. The game also supports clans so you can make your own virtual gang. Besides an all out deathmatch, 25 to Life has a couple of extra online modes. There’s raid where the gangsters try to defend their hideout from a law enforcement team. Tag has gamers compete by painting areas of their turf, the winners are whoever cover the area with the most tags. Robbery is the most unique mode, where criminals have to bring loot to drop off spots while avoiding rival cop players. If you’re carrying a lot of loot you’ll move slower, which makes you an easier target for the law enforcement team. Even with all the multiplayer options, online play still suffers from the same broken mechanics as the single player experience. Playing with other people is more fun than the single player mode, but not nearly as good as any other online game.
Why should you pick up 25 to Life? You shouldn’t, not even if it’s in a bargain bin marked down to a couple of bucks.
Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 0
Since 25 to Life was designed in the USA it’s completely in English.
US Bound?
25 to Life was released on 06.01.17 in the USA, with no set release dates for any other region.
+ Pros: Online play can be entertaining and the soundtrack is decent if you’re into rap.
– Cons: Nearly everything in the game is horrible and it’s just not fun to play.
Overall: 25 to Life is the first bomb of 2006 with abysmal graphics, boring gameplay and a washed up targeting mechanism. There’s no reason to buy, rent or even try 25 to Life with so many better games on the market.
< Screenshots >
If you want to purchase 25 to Life visit this link.
Published: Feb 3, 2006 12:43 pm