Remnant of Socom in the way it's played and controlled, 25 to life lacks in every other department.
You see, 25 to life has the controls of a good third person action game but that's really where the 'good' about it stops. 25 to life feels a bit like Socom in the way you move the character, take aim and take out the bad guys, however unlike Socom, it gets old very quick. You're armed with pistols, shotguns, various automatic guns, grenades, pipe bombs, Molotov's and more which fit into one of three categories. You can only hold one weapon per category, so you'll be juggling one pistol like weapon, one powerful weapon (shotgun or AK... etc) and a throwing weapon (Molotov, pipe bomb). You can also switch your current weapons for weapons your enemies drop, which is useful because they always seem to have the good weapons. Your story begins with cinematic involving you and your wife (and child), you argue that you're life of crime is over and after this last mission with your buddy you're going to have enough cash to move you and them someplace safe, away from the gang wars. Now, the first thing you'll notice about the game when you watch the cinematic and then begin your quest is the butt ugly graphics it supports. For a game released in Janurary 2006, it's shameful.
Throughout the game you'll find stereos everywhere! pumping out the game's sound track. A neat thing they did is allow you to change songs that are playing with any stereo you see. The soundtrack itself isn't too bad, featuring a handful (20+) of rap tunes from the likes of 2Pac, Xzibit and Tech N9ne. They're all rather action pumping songs but they seem so out of place in a game like this. For example, you'll be on the run from the cops or gunning down a rival gang and the whole time the songs are blaring with lyrics like "my b!tch, my girl, my ho!!!"... it's just doesn't make a lot of sense. I believe the audio would of benefited more from some instrumental only music which dynamically changed depending on how heated the action became.
Your enemies, whether they be cops or thugs all stand around like a bunch of baboons waiting for you to jump into their line of sight so they can open wide, their assault on you. Through locations such as alleys, gang neighbor hoods, mansions and casinos you'll mow down a good number of these "opponents" so you can continue your story. You might even take the initiative to grab your self a hostage to hold off police gun fire, but at the end of the day you're running through painfully linear paths, gunning down simplistic AI so you can get to point B.
Online proves to be a bit more entertaining than the "hey look how gangsta we can be" single player story. However if you want to customize your online character with various clothes you must complete objectives in each single player mission to earn such items. Objectives such as "gun down 40 enemies" or "take 4 hostages" or "finish with an accuracy rating over 35%" are rather easy to achieve and you hardly feel like you did much of anything. Online plays out like "Socom in the hood" in a more death matchy kind of way, which in itself can get rather boring.
At the end of the day, 25 to life is a game with some easy, thought out controls which take their lead from games like Socom or GTA but stumbles with almost everything else. A rushed, un-polished, waste of time.