The Game Dame™

I don’t mind that people are trashing 25 to Life. I just wish it was for the right reasons. Critics claim the game encourages players to kill police officers. The only thing it encouraged me to do is wonder why in the hell I dished out over $30.00 for such a decroded piece of crap.

I waited so long for this game to come out. I figured something with this much controversy surrounding it had to be good. When the game finally made it to the shelves, I ran out and grabbed a copy with high hopes.

My first impression was a good one. The game was packaged with an audio CD featuring the game soundtrack. Bonus. I popped the CD in on my way home, cranked it up, and checked out the first track.

Remember when you were a kid, and you’d play with the beats on your Casio Keyboard? This sounded worse. Luckily, the rest of the CD was decent. I hoped the game would follow suit. Boy, was I wrong.

Controls are clunky, confusing and backwards. “Boss fights” are a joke. There are no health meters on any of your opponents, so you never know how close you are to beating them. Every time I won a boss fight, I had an “is that it?” moment. There was never a cut-scene showing some rad bone-crushing slow-mo finishing move. Nope. Instead, the bullets just stop flying, they’re dead and it’s over. Then you get to read through a full screen of text letting you know what’s next on the agenda. Waaahooo!

In 25 to Life, you will play as three different characters. Unfortunately, because cut-scenes are few and far between and in-game dialogue is worth tuning out, you never really get to know any of them.

Out of all of the media blurbs I’ve read about this game, this is the best quote by far: “25 to Life is almost like a dirty joke — You’re laughing at how bad it is and feeling guilty at the same time. Don’t waste your time or money on this game, it’ll make your think-bone hurt.” (Source: Eduardo Vasconellos’ 25 to Life Review on GameSpy.com)

IN THE NEWS:
03.07.06 Lawmakers, police join fight to halt video game
“In an interview with online industry Web site Next Generation, Bill Gardner, head of Eidos, said the game “wasn’t that good,” but became popular because of the political backlash.”
(Source: TheTimesHerald.com)

03.07.06 State House Democrats support boycott of ‘25 to Life’ video game (Source: DETnews.com)