25 to Life Review

Kill’em All

Kill’em All

The game starts out with you assuming the role of Andre Francis, but his co-workers just call him "Freeze". He makes the tough decision that he wants out of the game (the gangster business), but apparently gang bosses don’t like to lose employees. Freeze’s family is kidnapped, forcing him right back into the life he is trying to leave behind him. It’s up to you to save your family, and you do this by killing every police officer and gang member on the face of the planet.

Over the course of the game, you’ll also get to play as two other characters, Shaun Calderon and Detective Lester Williams. Unfortunately, I don’t know their stories, because much like Freeze, I too wanted out of the 'game', so I shut it off. If I had to guess, I would say that their stories also involved mass murder, and probably hip hop music.

How You Do the Killing

25 to Life reminds me of the combat portion of the Grand Theft Auto series, which was arguably its weakest point. Your character feels stiff as a board as you jog around shooting people. The only way to keep your character from being completely exposed in a firefight is to lean out from behind objects, which is hardly useful as your character barely leans. There’s no sort of lock-on system, so it’s all about aiming, which isn’t the easiest thing to do. With the leaning system being as sub-par as it is, you’ll have to be pretty out in the open in order to successfully hit someone, which usually means that you’ll get shot several times yourself in the process.

For each mission, you’re given a primary objective which is what furthers the story and then secondary objectives like tag so many places (graffiti) and shoot so many characters in the face. I’m not even joking anymore. In the face.

Why Are You Still Reading This?

The graphics are bland and boring. The character animations are completely generic, especially the death animations. The audio, on the other hand, could’ve been a lot worse. The gunshots, while nothing revolutionary, work fine and the soundtrack is a nice mix of hip-hop. The voice acting is pretty bad, but as far as video game voice acting goes, that’s pretty standard.

All Of Your Friends Can Hate This Game Too

25 to Life offers multiplayer for up to 16 players. There’s a few different gameplay modes. War is your standard team deathmatch. In Raid, the criminals must protect the stash from the police. In Robbery, the cops must stop the criminals from stealing various items scattered across the map. And finally Tag pits two gangster teams against each other to see who can tag the most before time runs out.

Wrap Up

There’s really no excuse for a game this sub-par. The run-and-gun style gets tedious after the first level, and there’s absolutely nothing thrown in the mix to make you come back for more.