Kingpin: Life of Crime

Superb game, works 100% with small aditional tweaking. Instead of whining I will give you solutions ;) Its 2023, win10, I played it to completion in 1080p. What you need is small, UNOFFICIAL patch that fixes lot of problems calle mh's_kingpin_patch. You can get it on kingpin (dot) info website. With this patch game works and looks fantastic. There is one bug, very easy to fix. Heres how to do it. When you get to the point where you cant enter the door to big ship (two doors on two opposite sides of the big ship, both closed, one labeled) you need to use cheat "noclip" to pass doors WITHOUT any label. In order to do so edit the file AUTOEXEC.CFG (found in Kingpin's ''Main'' directory) and add the following line: set developer 1. Start game. You may now enter the following code by pressing the single quote (`) key while playing and typing "noclip" in the console window. Pass the door, use noclip again to fall to the ground. Save game. Edit AUTOEXEC.CFG again deleting line you have added, restart game. Now you can play it till the very end, no more bugs, pure pleasure. Amazing game!

Before you downvote this post in a rage, I have to point out I love Xatrix (Gray Matter), United Offensive and Return to Castle Wolfenstein probably two of my favorite games. But while I can beat RtCW on hard difficulty in my sleep, Kingpin is bafflingly difficult, and not in a good way. This is a classic example of a boomer-nostalgia game that is better left in the past. Based on the repugnant recent remaster, we're never going to get the Definitive Edition this game badly needs. Even on easy, enemies eat eight bullets to the face which is a huge problem as you have no ammo or money early game. The level design doesn't help, as it tends to send you backtracking, encouraging you to kill everybody just to be safe and because you always need health packs. No matter how much you sneak, one shot triggers every enemy to converge upon your position in a five-man army, even the ones you walked past earlier. Death sends you back to an auto save, which saps the fun out of the game pretty quickly since it forces you to play in such a boringly-conservative strategy, cheesing enemies around corners. This is no Half Life or Soldier of Fortune. As cool as the open world and interactions with NPCs are, it's squandered. The AI is amazing even now, and makes contemporary games like Deus Ex and Splinter Cell look like garbage, but Kingpin is let down by questionable decisions not limited to game balancing, lack of manual saves, and a redundant song that will even make a Cypress Hill fan mute the audio. RIP, Gray Matter.

The pros: Gritty atmosphere, solid engine, runs under Linux (wine) with no problems The cons: Very hard - I had to use health and armor cheats from time to time, music gets a bit monotonous. My verdict: If you're a fan of the classic FPS genre, you'll probably enjoy this game. At $5 it's a steal. I'd love to see GOG bulk up on it's FPS selection... there should be a ton of Quake 2 Quake 3 based shooters out there ready to scoop up.

Got into a shootout. Won with only 1% health left. Went searching for a medkit. Got bitten by a rat and died. Now there's a fist hole in my monitor. 10/10 Would play again!

I have been very disappointed by this game. The worst of all must be the terrible AI. The enemies act like terminators! Whatever the distance, they shoot with a 100% accuracy as soon as they detect you. Sometimes, instead of shooting they run away, or keep going up and down the stairs. Even if you hide behind a door to ambush them, they still manage to hit you before you hit them. It really does not feel like a good fps at all. For the rest, the level design is uninspired and pretty linear. The environments are as classic as most fps: the streets, the sewer, the factory, the docks, the train station etc... For the good points of the game: having companions could have been a good idea if they were useful. The graphics are fairly decent and the atmosphere of the game is quite good too, with a lot of violence, swearing and gangsta attitude. The possibility to "dialog" with the NPCs is a good idea, even if heavily limited. It can be sometimes hilarious, speaking with the word "fuck" as the Smurfs. Half-Life, Perfect Dark, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex were realized at the same period and are far more superior games than Kingpin. Would this game have a credible AI, a better level design and better weapons, I could have called it a decent game. Playing Kingpin until the end was not always funny, especially in the second half of the game when it gets more and more tedious, infuriating and boring.