For anyone looking for a definitive cops vs. robbers action game, this isn't it. In fact, it's not even close, though that applies mostly to the single player campaign. Like Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance and Crime Life: Gang Wars, 25 to Life is another gritty, gory title with plenty of foul language and pointless killing. In it, you'll play as three different characters: the gangster Shaun Calderon, Detective Lester Williams and Andre Freeze Francis. The game starts out following Freeze as he comes to the decision that he no longer wants to be involved with the criminal world. As soon as he tries to leave, though, he's pulled right back in as his family is kidnapped and he's forced to fight to escape the life he strives to put behind him.
Somehow, escaping this life means Freeze has to kill about 300 police officers. By some sort of seemingly divine grace, you're able to pull this off without drawing any sort of attention. It's strange because don't most real-life police officers call for backup if they're being attacked? I'm pretty sure they don't sit back at the station playing darts and placing bets on televised car chases while the rest of their precinct is being fatally punctured by the firearms of one guy. Though it can be said that no backup arrives to make the game playable, it may be one of the first of many unanswerable questions you'll find yourself asking your television as you play through this game's single player campaign. For instance, why are there so many boomboxes scattered around Mexico?
25 to Life is a third person action game with a terrible aiming mechanic and woefully inadequate controls. As you might assume, that does a whole lot to make the game as unnecessarily frustrating and perplexing as possible. In it, you'll be able to use a wide variety of guns including several pistols, SMGs, rifles, grenades and Molotov cocktails. Each painfully linear stage plays out through a series of combat arenas. In other words, you enter an area, kill the enemies, pick up the floating health pack, move to next area, kill more guys. That's pretty much it. With a game so specifically focused on combat, it's amazing how limited your character is in terms of abilities. After playing through the game's first two levels, you've seen pretty much all there is to see.
Whoever you're controlling can crouch, run around, occasionally vault walls and lean side to side. The leaning is the only combat option that might have proved worthwhile or added some strategy, but as it stands it's pretty much useless. For one, you don't really lean that far, so you can't see much more of the combat area than if you were to just run out from behind cover. Second, the actual lean is slow, meaning if there are enemies around that know where you are, they're definitely going to shoot you. Third, once noticed, the enemies will always seem to know when you're going to lean out.
Basically, this means fighting from cover is awkward and ineffective. This is especially true since enemies will frequently lean out from cover too. In many cases you can't see exactly where your foes are and because the leaning controls are so slow to respond, you'll have to stand out in the open to know when you're able to shoot at them. Don't get the wrong impression here; just because the enemies take cover doesn't mean they're smart. In fact, all the enemies in the game seem very, very confused.
http://www.fileserve.com/file/pk7YzUf/25_to_life.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/AkZh4xP/25_to_life.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/ucATr5C/25_to_life.part3.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/mWQzNgY/25_to_life.part4.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/CUXtUBX/25_to_life.part5.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/G4scaXB/25_to_life.part6.rar
note : review game from pc.ign.com