Kingpin: Life of Crime

released on Jun 30, 1999

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.


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this game shines when you have two goombash following you and whacking every lughead on the street and jostling every prostitute or hobo you come across while 16 men plays. you have to make use of idtech know-how like using a shotgun underneath a thug to juggle and stun them like dmc or hiding behind your bodyguards to soak up damage or trick ai to survive the early game. Once you get to poisonville and get your hands on the flamethrower it beecomes manageable as youj can stun them then murder them.

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!!!

Entering the world of Kinopin one gets greeted by several difficulties and having played lots of first person shooters before, one might mistakenly go for something above normal after which the first thug will promptly explore the depths of their rear end. After swallowing their pride and turning the difficulty back to the supposed intended experience, the first thug will probably STILL make for a roadblock, making the player use their god given sands of time on f6, f8, f9 or whatever the fuck it's bound to. The goal clearly being to drive in the feeling of a cruel, dog eat dog world; one where you'd have to scavenge for dosh to survive and hire other thugs to protect your skin. This beginning is my favorite part of the whole thing; the alleyways feeling oddly immersive and my gun doing fuck all honestly reminded me of Deus Ex. And I suppose the really awkward pushing and pulling of boxes to get inside vents would also make some call for the ayy murs eve sim comparisons. Shortly after getting the shotgun the whole thing becomes easier as John Kingpin starts shredding thugs in run down apartment complexes (bit that reminded me of Max Payne somewhat). Allies that you hire have surprisingly good AI, better than I expected for sure, at least in the parts where they climb and jump over obstacles, really made me contemplate why many modern games can't pull it off as well. But when all is said and done, Kingpin isn't really that fun to play even though it is interesting. You mow down thugs, the gunplay ranges from boring to fine depending on weaponry and the whole thing is over in about 6 hours. You can buy upgrades at the shop but this fucker never has what I want I swear, so while unique for the time not a feature worth so much praise. No clue what the story was really about, they said fuck a lot which I liked. Never again, however, will I take having more than one track in a game's OST for granted, and even more so having the same track play again over itself after entering another area. May be an issue of myself not patching the thing proper(?) and if it's just a quirk I'm sure the 2023 remaster has fixed it already (HAHA).

Hard to call this a 'good' game, but it's certainly interesting. It has a pretty novel structure for a QUAKE II/HALF-LIFE-type shooter with large free-roam hub areas, an emphasis on NPC interactions/side-quests, and at least in the early game, a difficult but engaging focus on survival and resource management as you scavenge for guns and money to buy upgrades so you can survive your first few combat encounters. Definitely a different direction than you might expect at first glance.

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.

why those rats do so much damage?

You buy it on GOG. You install it and get ready for some frantic boomer shooting. Then you get hit in the face with some of the most brutal difficulty right form the start. If you stick with it like I did, you probably did it for that unique late 90's rusty and gloomy fps atmosphere, which is one of a kind.

This game has a very immersive and well-realised world, with gritty realistic environments forming utterly nonsensical architectural layouts. The format of the protagonist's quest is quite formulaic, but it is helped by the steady introduction of more and more powerful weaponry throughout. The pathfinding on display here is very impressive, and the firearms generally feel quite satisfying to use (the gunplay is reminiscent of the studio's next title, Return to Castle Wolfenstein). The difficulty can be a bit steep, but it shouldn't be much of a problem if you quicksave before every encounter.

Overall, this game is just simple immersive fun. It's like if Deus Ex had the gameplay of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Would recommend.