25 to Life Review

Visually, 25 to Life is far behind today's standards. There are a few cool touches here and there, like when your character is near death and his vision becomes slightly blurred when you pan the camera around. On the whole, you don't have to be all that perceptive to realize how outdated this game looks. It's been a while since I've seen character models with such a small number of polys on them. The backdrop could also use richer texture patterns, on top of an increased poly count. Setting all of the visual parameters to the max didn't help much either. I've also had the misfortune of observing rigid and altogether awful character animation. Not to mention, that the environment is generally lifeless and very few objects can be interacted with.

Don't mess with an ex-marine!

Give me some chips now!

To make matters even worse, the development team didn't do much for the sound design either. Certain sound effects, for instance, were very unconvincing. This mostly relates to sound effects created by gunshots, which often seem like you're using kiddie plastic weapons from Toys R Us, rather than real-life firearms. The only thing that gives the whole game a slight touch of style is the cool soundtrack, which features tracks from numerous rap celebs (Tupac, DMX, Public Enemy, Xzibit and others).

The game's multiplayer mode is slightly more entertaining. This part of the game, surprisingly, offers a variety of game settings to go through, plus you can take the time to customize your character. Generally however, the basic flaws from the single-player mode are present here as well (well, with the exception of the opponent AI, at least). The MP in 25 to Life does have potential, but it never seems to be addictive enough and it simply fails to bring any innovations in terms of gameplay.

Is there no end to Eidos' (and now SCi's) woes? They are obviously forcing things by dishing out poor titles such as 25 to Life. The game can be described as a lousy rip off of San Andreas or a pretty bad imitation of Max Payne. I assume that one glance at the game's screenshots is sufficient evidence that 25 to Life doesn't live up to either of the aforementioned franchises. The bottom line is that it doesn't come even close to the open-ended gameplay of GTA and the overall quality of Max Payne. Drawing any further comparison with these two well-known titles would be a waste of time. In fact, the entire game is a waste of time and money. Therefore, my honest advice is that if you happen to have 30 bucks lying around, don't waste them on this. Save your money for a more decent game.