25 to Life E3 2005 Impressions

25 to Life is Eidos' take on the online console shooter, featuring a cops and robbers theme and a straight-out-of Hollywood storyline. Though the game promises to have a rich and involved single-player game full of plot twists, betrayals, and flying bullets by the ton, we made it our E3 2005 mission to check out the online multiplayer component, which looks to be coming along nicely.

If you needed a short phrase to describe the 16-player online experience in 25 to Life, it might be: "SOCOM with cops and crooks." But while the number of players brings to mind the popular military PS2 shooter, there are a number of wrinkles in the 25 to Life mix that make the experience unique to that game. For one thing, we're talking about two groups on opposite sides of the law. For the bad guys, anything goes and pedestrians are little more than human shields. The cops, on the other hand, are charged with saving the lives of the innocents caught in the middle of the battle, as well as using nonlethal methods to bring down the crooks.

What this amounts to is a delicate online balance, one the Highway One development team is still perfecting. For one thing, weapon balance is crucial in a game where non-player character casualties can upset the tide of a match. To that end, the team has made sure that the police forces have a wide variety of both lethal and nonlethal weaponry--everything from pistols galore to Tasers and smoke grenades. This tactical weaponry will likely be more accurate, as it will serve the cops' need for avoiding gunning down the good guys, and, at the same time, it will mostly have a slower rate of fire. For the gang members, it will be all about spraying lead as fast as possible, without regard to accuracy or aim. As such, the Uzis and Tek-9s that the bad guys will be armed with will shoot quick but won't be much in the accuracy department. One nice touch confirmed by the game's producers is the ability for both sides to use one another's weaponry. If you're a gang member looking to put some humiliating Taser action on your cop buddy, you'll be able to do it online.

But balance in online shooters is more than just making sure the weapons match up. The team is also experimenting with things like variable spawn times in the game. For example, if you're a cop and you shoot dead an opponent, his respawn penalty may be 10 seconds. However, if you manage to actually apprehend your foe and put him away without killing him, he won't respawn for 30 seconds. The team is also experimenting with ways to penalize cops for shooting NPCs, but they have yet to decide on a similar action that would apply a penalty to the bad guys as well. The aim is to end up with a final design that encourages cops to play like heroes, and bad guys to play like the homicidal maniacs portrayed in the game.

Customization in the online game will be a big part of the fun in 25 to Life, and the massive amount of clothing options--including things like masks, pants, shirts, and more--should be encouraging to those who like to mess with that type of thing. 25 to Life will also have a lot of unlockable content, and a big chunk of that will be a reward for meeting certain milestones, such as making 100 kills, or 50 headshots, for example.

25 to Life is currently on target for a summer release, and we'll have a full review of the game once it finally makes its way to retail.