Shame on you, Eidos. You brought us the first lady of gaming when you published the first Tomb Raider and, I think it's safe to say that because of that, we all expected great things from you. The sad reality is that Eidos titles tend to run on the path of mediocrity. Sure, series like Hitman and TimeSplitters have been peppered into their library, but the vast majority are inexcusable games (Backyard Wrestling, I'm looking at you). Maybe the few good titles can excuse the rest if the poor games are on a smaller scale, but considering the ratio of good to poor these days, it's tough to look the other way.

The latest Eidos title, 25 to Life, is really something that should have been snubbed early on. The game follows the trend of trying to bring some urban flavor to the selection of titles gamers can choose from, much like GTA: San Andreas. Rather than capturing the entrancing stories found in genre staples like Boyz n the Hood, we are stuck with something found in a Seag-awful waste of time and celluloid like Half Past Dead -- a yarn filled with so many clichés and wrapped in a box of ridiculously bad game mechanics, it's shocking that anyone would allow this game to be made.


The narrative guides gamers through the eyes of multiple characters including the ne'er-do-well trying to get a fresh start and do right by his family, but is dragged back into the life of crime for one last gig; a thuggish criminal bent on stealing and killing cops; a seasoned veteran of the police force who wants to do nothing more than clean up the streets; and a hard-boiled cop, fresh off of probation with a chip on her shoulder and something to prove. Sound familiar? It should -- it borrows heavily from the most notorious formulas known to this type of story. Not only is it lazy in developing any sort of intrigue, the story itself is just boring.

Okay, so the story is drab, but what about the actual in-game action? That should at least have some good ol' thoughtless, senseless violence making things at least passably fun, right? Wrong.

For starters, the visuals are truly some of the worst of this generation -- blocky, jaggy character models and environments without too much detail while offering up nothing to dazzle the eye whatsoever. On top of that, I'm not sure if it's a filter, or the television used or just flat out bad design, but there's this haze that can really throw a fella off. You know when you go swimming without goggles for a long time and when you get out, everything looks cloudy? That's what this game looks like the whole way through.

To complement the squirrelly visuals, the developers churned out some of the cheapest audio in recent times. Pistols firing sound like snaps, machine guns sound like some guy was making machine gun noises and shotgun blasts sounds like helicopters are passing overhead. The voice-over performances were slouches too- not only are the lines poorly written, their deliveries are jilted and wooden, reminiscent of the C-List acting from the original Resident Evil --these performances make Ja Rule look like he's got acting talent. The difference here is that while the performances in RE were sketchy at best, the game held it's own, providing a fun and challenging experience. 25 to Life, on the other hand, tries to be edgy by drowning players in a sea of obscenity and violence that it only comes off as an insult. Just because everybody swears non-stop, that doesn't make it anything close to being an interesting depiction of life on the street.