Kingpin: Life of Crime

"Violence, profanity, and gangsters. What more could you ask for?"

Three words: this*game*rocks. This said, I'll move on to the review.

The exaggerated system requirements of this game (for its time) make up for the excellent experience I had after I finally got to play it! (It sat on my shelf collecting dust for a full year before I could get a decent 3D accelerator capable of running it).

Ok, so the story is that you get beaten up by two hoodlums who work for a man named Nicki Blanco, who, at the same time, works for Marsellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction! Well, the last is not true, but this guy resembles Ving Rhames's famous character so closely, it is obvious that this is a nod from Xatrix (Kinpin's creators) to Quentin Tarantino's movie. Anyway, you wake up in a dark alley in a miserable ghetto, with nothing but revenge on your mind. So begins your quest for payback.

GRAPHICS 9/10
Graphically speaking, Kingpin shines. The different areas you travel are really atmospheric, from the slums of Skidrow to the industrial area of Poisonville, to the piers. A vast amount of detail has been put into the condemned buildings, the broken sidewalks, the foggy alleys, and others. And the characters are well rendered, too. Bullet wounds actually show up on a a body every time it is shot, which adds a lot of realism to the player's experience. You can even blow someone's head clean off with a shotgun! HA HA HA!

GAMEPLAY 10/10
However, Kingpin doesn't rely only on killing everyone. Often, you must interact with other characters to reach different goals. For example, in order to retrieve some documents a for a man who recruits you, you must hire a particular guy to crack the safe in which the documents are stored. Often you are given the possibility to hire some muscle to back you up, which comes in handy since the enemies won't be merciful on you at all. So this is not a senseless fragfest, like, say, the Quake series. You can also buy new weapons (the tommy gun is my favorite) or upgrade your current ones (try the silencer on the magnum, he he he), among other things.

SOUND 8/10
Ah, yes. The sound department... Let me put it this way: Kingpin is NOT for kids. As you would expect from real lowlifes and thugs, in Kingpin their language is very colorful in terms of vulgarity and offensiveness. Swearing, swearing and more swearing (a particular character, ironically nicknamed ''The Jesus'' excels at this). The voice acting is pretty convincing, and the Marsellus Wallace look-alike even sounds like its movie counterpart. The gunshot sounds are ultra-realistic, and the best of all is the sound (and sight) of someone caught up in flames, running in circles and screaming like a demented hound. The only reason I give the sound an 8 instead of a 10, is because of the mediocre, limited use of hip-hop band Cypress Hill's music. Although it perfectly suits the environment, it is annoyingly repetitive, as only small segments of their excellent tunes loop over and over. Tsk, tsk. A complete misfire from Xatrix. But, in all, this is just a minor gripe.

REPLAY VALUE 9/10
As far as first-person shooters go, I would say that Kinpin really delivers. This is, in fact, like playing a Quentin Tarantino movie, so the sense of boredom will rarely kick in. Although it is ultra-violent and profane, it adds some innovative features that have been successfully implemented in other great FPS titles (character interaction from Half-Life and taunting and insulting from Unreal Tournament come to mind).

THE FINAL WORD
Kingpin is a very interesting game that should be given a shot (literally), even by anti-FPS gamers. I highly recommend it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/03