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25 To Life Review: Should You Invest?

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25 To Life Review: Should You Invest?

25 To Life a third-person shooter video game allows the player the ability to play as both a cop and gangster, depending on what the player is feeling at the time. This video game was released in 2006, published by Eidos Interactive for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows. 25 To Life can be played online with up to 16 players using a network adapter for PlayStation 2 as well as Microsoft Xbox and Xbox Live. Let’s dive into the elements of 25 To Life and discover whether or not it is worth the investment.

Storyline For 25 To Life

25 to life screenshot
Las Ruinas police investigate city’s organized crime.

The single player in 25 To Life focuses upon three different playable characters each with their own ulterior motives for moving towards their eventual destiny. Andre Freeze Francis, the main character,  is a gangster who just can’t get out of “the life”, even though his wife desperately wants him out. But just when you think you’re out…they pull you right back in again.

Within the fictional city of Las Ruinas, Freeze and his friend Shaun Calderon commit crimes for money to support his family while a police officer, Lester Williams, combats organized crime through the city. 

As you progress, you’ll character hop into those who have sworn to uphold the law, those who don’t care for the law and those who are neither good nor evil.

Gameplay 

Eidos grants you a decent amount of control but after you play for a while you’ll realize you won’t need most of it. You can crouch, jump, melee, shoot, grenade toss, taunt, reload and lean out from behind cover to shoot. The lean move is quite touchy and mostly ineffective. 

It’s hard to line up the character to the exact point where you can lean around corners. It doesn’t appear that the game “snaps” you to the corner so you’ll often find yourself leaning too far out which leaves you wide open to take a shot in the head.

Taking a hostage extremely limits your moves and it doesn’t appear to be in the best interests of other players to save the hostage. Ducking for cover is more of a necessity than it is a viable game mechanic because the enemies in 25 To Life are hellbent on your destruction that they’ve lost any sense of security for their own safety. Most of them run around shooting in your general direction until you manage to kill them.

Features Of 25 To Life

25 to life gameplay screenshot
Third person view of conflict within 25 To Life.
  • Battle online with up to 16 players in this intense urban battlefield. Establish and defend your turf or uphold the law and exchange fire against your opponents using the USB Headset!
  • Experience the world of 25 To Life as you try to survive life on the grind as a rising gangster forced into life threatening situations.
  • Highly interactive urban environment delivers a superior and realistic game-play experience. Car alarms, barking dogs, pedestrians are few of the items that may give your position away.
  • Fully customizable character system gives you the freedom to define your looks and style. Display your ranking by unlocking and customizing your gear with the latest threads.
  • Robust weapons arsenal includes both lethal and non-lethal ways to take down your opponents.
  • Cutting Edge Hip Hop soundtrack featuring undeniable rap classics as well as the best of current and breaking artists

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve exhausted yourself playing the single player game, be sure to investigate 25 To Life’s entertaining online mode. Since the concept of making a GTA game online was no doubt the impetus for 25 To Life, you can almost throw away the flawed single player game in favor of the online action. Unfortunately, you might have to wait a long time before you locate other players to shoot at, but once you do, you’ll realize that this is definitely the mode Eidos intended for the spotlight.

Something else to note is, due to the allowances of the M rating developers are becoming so fascinated and preoccupied with adult language that they’re mistakenly confusing it with gameplay. Swearing isn’t gameplay nor does it make up for a lack of it.

At the end of the day, 25 To Life just isn’t worth it. It’s a full priced game that feels rushed and is lacking in many important areas.

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