Kingpin: Life of Crime

Great shooter, great pacing, great atmosphere, excellent concept. The whole game is about rising within the criminal underworld, the game has an incredibly sordid atmosphere that's a bit reminiscent of games like Manhunt, or The Darkness. It is incredibly vulgar, and violent, there's a ton of blood and gore constantly flying out, the whole first chapter revolves in beating up guys with crowbars, and pipes only to then rob them. With the money you can obtain weapons, or items that then you can exchange for paths to progress through the game, or for tools that will help you in your journey. When the game is at its best it's when the game has a fast pacing, and an action like approach. I also enjoy the conversations that you can have with different npc's from the world and the results on how this conversations will end up changing what you look for in different areas of the game. The game also, for the most part, has superb level design involving a lot of backtracking, and exploring, but never feeling confusing. When the game is at its worst is when the game forces you halfway through to go through a complex and large area in which is very easy to get lost, specifically when the game never hints at certain ways to progress or improve your experience. Such as looting bodies, or shooting at specific objects to create pathways. Then there's the issue with some random difficulty spikes here and there. The game doesn't use any checkpoints, or autosaves, instead it relies in an archaic quick save, quick load type of mechanic, which can prove to be annoying. However, the end result of the experience has such satisfying and brutal combat, such an interesting, and well realized world, and atmosphere, as incredible characters, that while simple, they're all charming in their own way. That I don't feel comfortable calling this game anything other than excellent. I'll love to even go through it again with cheat codes that make me immortal, and give me all the weapons.

This game wasnt about singleplay. The core of the game was in multiplayer with great variation of CTF called Bagman. Good tactics and team coordination was the key to succes in bagman. It was suited for Clan battles. I spend a lot of time with this game on old server gamezone.cz, in my clan Marcello Assasins. It was a good time and I have to recommend this game.

Holds up really well

One of the titles you have to play at least one time

It's not the best old school FPS around, but it's certainly not the worst neither! It has its pros and its cons. Some of the pros? Solid action, nice weapon selection, smart gang member a.i. and the voice acting ain't half bad! Some of the cons on the other hand, include way too much vulgar language, it feels like it's trying too hard to be edgy and cool. It runs on id Tech 2, which powered the mega hit game Quake II. However, for some reason, Quake II looks better than Kingpin. The models have an "under water" wavy effect on them, and people look a bit too chunky or buff. Also, while I love Cypress Hill, they didn't use their music well at all. Which is a damn shame. Overall, for the current price, you can't go wrong, love it or hate it, it did manage to do a couple new things. If you enjoy other old school FPS games, buy this and play it. See for yourself!