Kingpin: Life of Crime
When I first heard of Kingpin, I envisioned a gory first-person shooter that would rise above the pack by incorporating the character interaction of a good roleplaying or adventure game. After all, it's sub-titled Life of Crime; I assumed that building a criminal empire would be part and parcel of the process. But in Kingpin, 95 percent of the "crimes" you commit are simply killings - sometimes criminally justifiable, mostly not, but out-and-out killing nonetheless. Some gamers have lauded Xatrix for having the "balls" to create such a bloodfest - but you'll notice that the game shies away from "real" kingpin activities like racketeering, drugs, prostitution, and other big-time moneymakers in the criminal world. It's a lot easier to pad down a trail someone else has created, and that's basically all Xatrix has done with Kingpin. Sure, there are some puzzles tossed into the mix, but most involve finding a key or figuring out which switch needs to be thrown - in short, busywork.
You begin your "life of crime" as an anonymous thug lying bruised and bleeding in an alley, the victim of a punishment beating for an unspecified affront. Armed with nothing but a lead pipe, you hit the streets in search of revenge - and soon learn that you're not as tough as you might think. Even on lower difficulty settings, sneaking up behind someone and braining them with a steel pipe doesn't seem to give you much of an advantage because everyone turns and hits you a split-second after your blow has landed. It's the first sneaking suspicion you'll get that things in Kingpin aren't quite as gritty and realistic as the gory advertisements have made the game out to be.
You might not notice this for a while, though, thanks to the truly inspired graphics lavished on the buildings and streets. Although you'll need a "kingpin" of a system to run the game at resolutions of 800x600 or higher, you'll be rewarded with what are arguably the most convincing cityscapes ever created: steam snakes lazily from manhole covers, fires crackle and burn in barrels, and the proportions of the buildings are uncannily realistic. These might be some mean streets, but they're still a marvel to behold - and they'd better be, since Kingpin's numerous and lengthy loading pauses make immersion difficult even on a super-fast system.
Too bad the people that inhabit the world of Kingpin aren't nearly as convincing. This is a world of automatons: unless a character has a key piece of information, expect to hear him or her spout the same generic (and profanity-laced) lines as the last robot you talked to. (There's an option to install a version without the obscenities, but it also robs you of all the blood - one of the few impressive things in the game.) The box copy claims you can talk "cool" or "smack" to the people you meet, but in practice, "cool" winds up being "So what's all the commotion?" or "So what's up?," while "smack" is merely a line or three inspired by Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, or Menace 2 Society. Want a good laugh? Try talking "smack" to the guy who thanks you for returning his watch to him (yes, you had to kill someone to get it). After he gushes, "Oh jeez, thanks a lot, you're really Jake for returning my watch" in a broad New Jersey Accent, hit him with a line like "I will #$%@ bury you!" or "You #$*@ piece of ?*&@" - and listen in amazement as he continues to crawl at your feet in thanks for returning his timepiece!
Although you could just as easily finish the game without any help, you're given the opportunity to hire gang members as you acquire more cash - but it's just another good idea that's been poorly implemented. Want them to take the point in case you run into trouble? Tough - unless you've spotted an enemy, they always trail behind you. And talk about dumb: I had two hoods with me as I was about to call an elevator; one was crushed as he stood underneath it, and the other had his head sheared off as we ascended because he was too close to the railing! Worst of all is that while you can order them to attack targets or perform a specific task, you can't get these goons to grab a medikit and heal themselves.
There's no denying that the "damage effects" - i.e., the blood and gore - are impressive: you'll see heads blown off, legs shredded from torsos, geysers of the crimson stuff, and even bloody footprints in the sidewalk as an intended victim flees your wrath. But thanks to stupid weapon effects - grenades with practically no blast radius, a flamethrower that won't work if someone's "too close," a heavy machine-gun that only burps bullets - and the flaky AI routines, you quickly tire of the gore and instead start fixating on all the stupid, unbelievable things happening in the game.
Just take a read over these oddities: a dead guy standing bolt upright on one leg; enemies firing non-stop shotgun blasts for three minutes at an empty spot on the sidewalk; enemies running in circles; enemies running back and forth like ducks in a shooting gallery; enemies literally flying through the air as they climb ladders; dollar bills still intact after you've burned the guy carrying them to a crisp; and enemies that can see and sometimes fire on you when you're completely out of sight. Worst of all is the moment when, about halfway through the game, you pick up a rocket launcher and realize that this is basically Quake Goes to Town with some wind-up dolls thrown in for good measure. If you're not convinced, just check out the endgame, where you fight the Kingpin and his girlfriend - and learn that she's completely, totally invulnerable to weapons fire! Talk about a boss, eh?
A great multiplayer mode could have elevated Kingpin's final rating, but my results with Internet play ranged from merely average to abysmal. The game played horribly in every session I tried on SegaSoft's HEAT network, probably because the service didn't support the latest patch to improve online performance. Things were much better with the patched version using GameSpy to find dedicated Kingpin servers, but even on the lowest-latency servers I encountered a ton of hiccups and pauses in the animation - one second you're looking at the ground, the next you're staring at the ceiling as your character gets shredded by machine-gun fire. Sloppy network coding? You're soaking in it!
So now you know the score, and the only question that remains to be answered is who'll make the most fuss about Kingpin - conservatives who think computer games lead to real-life violence, or gamers who've shelled out bucks for a game that winds up being a one-trick pony?