Sometimes the hype machine that embraces games can be a great thing to boost sales and spread the word of an upcoming release. Some games don’t need any hype whatsoever and have what it takes to become a best seller all on its own. Hyped as the next big gangsta, street-life game, in 25 to Life you take control of both criminal and law enforcement characters, and make your way through both a captivating, intertwining storyline and thumb numbing gameplay. Well, that was the intention anyways. 25 to Life could have all the hype in the world surrounding it and nothing would be able to save the game from itself.

The not-so tantalizing tale of 25 to Life follows three main characters; Freeze, Detective Williams and Shaun Calderon, who is Freeze’s best friend and leader of the D-Boys, the gang they both belong to. At the start of the game, Freeze wants out of the gang life to have a future with his wife and son. When he informs Shaun of his plans, Shaun wants Freeze to pull off one last job and then he is free to go. If you have seen more than 2 movies in your lifetime, you know how this will play out. When Freeze arrives to pull off the job, he learns that the police have been tipped off and he was double crossed. Once Freeze eludes the police, Shaun kidnaps Freeze’s wife and child and makes off with the loot. Now Freeze must find Shaun and get his wife and child back but to do so, he needs some cash.

In an absolutely genius idea, he decides to go and rob a bank and is ultimately caught and tossed in prison. The rest of the game follows a detective as he chases after Shaun and then later on, you will play as Shaun to take down another gang leader. Once they are played through, you will revisit Freeze and will return to your mission of tracking down your family. The storyline does jump around a lot and really seems pretty pointless in many spots. Playing as the police officer for the few missions you do, just doesn’t seem to fit in and feels like it is mostly filler to give a small part of the story a nudge along.

The game play is about as lackluster as the story line is. Games don’t get much linear than you will find here. There is no free roaming and you are coursed along the single path all the way to the end of the level. Along the way, enemies will pop out from windows and doors and are simply provided as bags of meat for you to empty your gun into. There are the few times that you will get rushed by many enemies all at once and it can get a little hectic, but simply back tracking to a door way or a corner, will allow you to pick off enemies one by one as they enter or appear.

On the harder settings, you will find yourself biting the dust very often as the enemies seem to have incredible accuracy no matter where they are and the damage they do is high, but on the regular settings, the damage is minimal and not much of a real threat. Among the many weapons you can use such as Ak’s, Mp’s, Colts, and Mac 10’s, there are also pipe bombs, baseball bats, hammers and even rocket launchers. There is no auto aiming, so you are on your own when it comes to taking down your foes. It can be tricky at first and you may think you have horrible accuracy, until you realize that you can shoot someone in the legs and chest countless times until they finally drop. Some goes with one level where you need to snipe some police officers on a rooftop. They can be dead in your sights and may take only one shot to drop, then again, sometimes they will take 4 shots to take down. The damage is very inconsistent and quite baffling at times.

The audio and music tracks were to be another large selling point and even come with the game on a separate CD. Fans of hip-hop and rap may enjoy some of the songs that are found in the game, although the majority of them are very old, but then again, it does match the dated graphics. There are also boom box stereos scattered all over the game that allow you to switch the tunes to the next song, but unfortunately, shooting them doesn’t kill the music. The voice acting, while in itself is not horrible, the dialogue that they deliver is. When you take a female hostage and you hear her say “You’re not a very nice person” or a police officer say “I don’t want to kill you, I just want to talk!”, it doesn’t really come off as too believable and just down right cheesy.

Each mission you play has primary objectives and secondary objectives. Although the secondary objectives reward you with unlockables, they are only used in the multiplayer portion of the game. Some of the objectives range from finding secret items, to pulling off a number of headshots and the rewards you receive range from clothing, accessories and tattoos. Once you have gathered a pile of rewards from the single player game, the multiplayer character you choose to use can become very customized. You can change the appearance of your avatar all the way from facial hair and clothing color, right down to eye and skin color as well as creating a custom tag that you can spray on walls. Although creating your player is fun to do, that’s about the extent of how fun the multiplayer is. There are plenty of different game types such as Raid, Robbery, Tag and War which is your classic Team Deathmatch, but the simple graphics and uninspired gameplay just doesn’t give it enough kick to make it anything special.

25 to Life goes to show that just because a game is hyped up in the news, it really takes a lot more than that to make a game halfway decent. 25 to Life does include a somewhat entertaining multiplayer aspect, but not enough to keep your attention for very long. The single player side is pretty short with 12 missions and really includes nothing special or original at all within it. If you need to get your street-gangsta game fix, you’ll have better luck looking elsewhere.