Kingpin: Life of Crime is a first-person shooter developed by Xatrix Entertainment (now a part of Treyarch) and published by Interplay Entertainment in June 1999. The game begins with the player character wounded and beaten up by the Kingpin's henchmen, and the story follows his thirst for revenge. Released shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, the game attracted controversy which led it to be dropped from various retailers, despite receiving moderate critical acclaim. The soundtrack for Kingpin was provided by the rap group Cypress Hill, and featured three tracks from their album IV. They were: - 16 Men Till There's No Men Left - Checkmate - Lightning Strikes Alongside the full versions of these tracks, instrumental versions with the vocals removed were used as backing tracks. Cypress Hill also provided some of the voice acting for the game.
Reviews View More
theres is an active multiplayer community that plays a couple of times a week, with maps from other idtech games ported, christmas and halloween mods, and new gamemodes and whatnot. play y it!!!
It's a good thing, too, that there's more going on than just the shooting, because if it was a straight level-based thing, it probably wouldn't hold up at all. The levels are actually pretty fun and well-constructed, and there's a nice escalation to the campaign, but the shooting itself is so janky and repetitive. Even with the fun unconventional stuff laid on top, the ho-hum foundation will have you getting bored way before the end, especially as the rhythm of the hub world/quest design gets repetitive.
But there's a lot of good and pretty weird stuff in the intangibles that might hold your attention, if you can stomach the whole, uh, vibe that they're going for. Levels are way more alive with detail than most contemporaries, albeit in this particular run-down, scuzzy style. Those visuals, the absolutely insane-looking character models, immersive touches like blood trails and enemies deforming with damage, and the hypnotic, maddening soundtrack (consisting of like, literally two or three Cypress Hill songs repeated THE WHOLE GAME) just fully transport you into this goofy-ass urban hell that you feel trapped in but maybe you kinda like it? And actually want to kill your way to the top of this absurdly profane and childish criminal organization? And there's also these weirdly unexplained steampunk elements lending an uncanny air. I don't know, you play this for a couple hours and it'll do something to your brain. If you don't immediately shut it off for being overwhelmingly stupid, lol.
Kind of a 'you gotta hand it to em' sort of thing. Weird and maybe bad, but they really went for it.
Overall, this game is just simple immersive fun. It's like if Deus Ex had the gameplay of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Would recommend.