25 To Life
One life to waste.
Published: February 19, 2006
It's very, very important to listen to me: do not buy this game. Rent it, sure, and perhaps play it online, but by no means should anyone support the idea of a half-baked attempt at a bunch of obvious clueless yokels trying to introduce "street" or "urban" themes into a game that was crap to begin with. 25 To Life is a joke burned onto a disc and deserves no place in any gamers' library.
I know that sounds harsh, and for someone that has lavished heaps of praise on developer Avalanche for their Tak games, it might be a little weird hearing something this flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum, but this is not the product of the same people that created a series of platformers that should be held in the same regard as an original PlayStation Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon.
25TL starts with a half-assed pre-rendered sequence shown through in-game footage - footage apparently taken from an early build of the game with pre-release assets and half-assed voice acting, but at least it fills you in on the details: Andre "Freeze" Francis wants out of the game. Shaun Calderon, the local gang leader doesn't like the news, but seemingly goes along with it at first before revealing -- gasp -- you can't just walk away from a gang. What follows is a series of missions four or so mission from the viewpoints of Francis, Calderon and Detective Lester Williams, who is investigating drug money leading back to Calderon.
In the middle and stirring up the pot is fellow Detective Maria Mendoza, who has a vested interest in seeing Calderon go free. She sets Freeze up, and has a bit of a confrontation with Williams. All of this is told more or less by cinemas that are done with in-game assets, but presented in a resolution that's different from the game's so you'll often see it pushed to the left and oddly letterboxed. You'll also be treated to more instances of forced profanity than GTA: San Andreas. Fun.
The meat of the game is running and shooting. You can occasionally take a innocent bystander (but never an enemy) as a hostage and use them as a human shield, but they're really just there to make you move more slowly and have difficulty going up stairs. That's right stairs suddenly present an nearly insurmountable problem when you've got a hostage, forcing a trial-and-error bit of maneuvering left and right until you find that magical sweet spot that the hostage's feet will graft onto.
This is a minor annoyance compared to the sheer absurdity of the actual combat, though. Enemies -- plain vanilla enemies with no real protection above the neck -- take multiple shots to the face to kill. Part of this is because many enemies wear body armor, and aiming for center mass will just waste half a clip before you can put them down, which is fairly understandable. Two point-blank shotgun blasts to the face are not.
The environment is mainly there for decoration. Sure you can crouch behind things, but they provide minimal cover and waste time. Thanks to it apparently raining health packs a few minutes before you got there, it's far more productive to simply charge the enemy while trying desperately to hold the single-pixel target area over their head. Even if you are creeping around, and their entire head is dwarfed by the little red dot, you still may miss.
I know that sounds harsh, and for someone that has lavished heaps of praise on developer Avalanche for their Tak games, it might be a little weird hearing something this flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum, but this is not the product of the same people that created a series of platformers that should be held in the same regard as an original PlayStation Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon.
25TL starts with a half-assed pre-rendered sequence shown through in-game footage - footage apparently taken from an early build of the game with pre-release assets and half-assed voice acting, but at least it fills you in on the details: Andre "Freeze" Francis wants out of the game. Shaun Calderon, the local gang leader doesn't like the news, but seemingly goes along with it at first before revealing -- gasp -- you can't just walk away from a gang. What follows is a series of missions four or so mission from the viewpoints of Francis, Calderon and Detective Lester Williams, who is investigating drug money leading back to Calderon.
In the middle and stirring up the pot is fellow Detective Maria Mendoza, who has a vested interest in seeing Calderon go free. She sets Freeze up, and has a bit of a confrontation with Williams. All of this is told more or less by cinemas that are done with in-game assets, but presented in a resolution that's different from the game's so you'll often see it pushed to the left and oddly letterboxed. You'll also be treated to more instances of forced profanity than GTA: San Andreas. Fun.
The meat of the game is running and shooting. You can occasionally take a innocent bystander (but never an enemy) as a hostage and use them as a human shield, but they're really just there to make you move more slowly and have difficulty going up stairs. That's right stairs suddenly present an nearly insurmountable problem when you've got a hostage, forcing a trial-and-error bit of maneuvering left and right until you find that magical sweet spot that the hostage's feet will graft onto.
This is a minor annoyance compared to the sheer absurdity of the actual combat, though. Enemies -- plain vanilla enemies with no real protection above the neck -- take multiple shots to the face to kill. Part of this is because many enemies wear body armor, and aiming for center mass will just waste half a clip before you can put them down, which is fairly understandable. Two point-blank shotgun blasts to the face are not.
The environment is mainly there for decoration. Sure you can crouch behind things, but they provide minimal cover and waste time. Thanks to it apparently raining health packs a few minutes before you got there, it's far more productive to simply charge the enemy while trying desperately to hold the single-pixel target area over their head. Even if you are creeping around, and their entire head is dwarfed by the little red dot, you still may miss.
