Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2014

  Please note, I played this game primarily with the "Rags 2 Riches" mod as it fixes how much of a slog the game becomes in the second half. The game's bread and butter is shooting criminals in the face. The formula for the game is you go in an area, visit the bar, talk to some people who can get you access to a part of the map, maybe recruit someone. You go to the newly available area, murder basically everyone and loot bodies, then after doing whatever you need to do after, you go to the second part of the map, murder everyone, fight a guy with incredibly high health, then you move to the next level. Repeat. Each level has its variation on how this actually plays out but when you play you can easily see the formula. There are 7 levels, amounting to around 9 hours of gameplay, more if you play the base game. In the base game, your weapons are pathetic and are quite ineffective as the enemies have absurd amounts of health. You rely on the 1 or 2 goons you can typically get in all but 1 level of the game, and place them on corners, then you bait the enemies to the ambush point and they get smoked. Charging in all willy nilly is going to get you murdered, because the enemies have perfect accuracy and incredibly high health. In the Rags 2 Riches mod, you can still do this and on some parts its very helpful, but its much easier to just charge in gung ho with your crew and try to take on the bad guys. Besides slowly increasing your body count with your crew, you'll be doing a few other things in the gameplay. You can Visit a shop called the "Pawn-O-Matic", despite not being automatic, is a store where you can buy armor, health, weapons, ammo, and mods that wear out over time without Rags 2 Riches. You can also talk to random people on the street, a select few will tell you stuff that can be incredibly helpful, others may do stuff for you for money, most will just tell you "Another freekin' night and no pussy." You can also visit the bar, found in all chapters but 1, where most of the helpful npc's reside, and where the recruitable goons usually are. You can also go exploring which can net you even more surplus cash to spend at the Pawn-O-Matic, ammo, armor, and health. Theres not a whole lot to be done outside of the main shooting bits of the game. The plot sucks but its all you need. Some guy named Nikki had his shmucks beat the snot out of you in a back alley for unknown reasons, and you vow to get revenge and go around either a city or multiple cities, its not very clear, ravaging gang after gang. The Kingpin is like "yo kill this guy". Excuse me, he's more like "you fuckin fucks better fuckin kill this fuckin fuck or ill fuckin fuck your fuckin fuck up you fuckin fucks." Seriously, this game has a lot of swearing, and violence. The dialogue is great, almost every line in the game has a cuss in it, and the main voice actor did a great job of making the lines memorable. Seriously, the line "FUCK YOU FUCK" that enemies sometimes yell when you alert them has been burned into my mind for 3 years now. Easily the best part of the game is the atmosphere. The graphics, music, voice acting, and design of the world all are great. Forget I said music, the CD Music setting didn't work for me on the steam version, not surprised, and theres like 3 songs that loop on the radios you find in the game, albiet I do actually like one of the songs that loops. The lack of music helps create this forboding and tense and sorta creepy atmosphere. You could just be walking in this silent apartment building or run down area, and you have no idea where the enemies are hiding, while the ambient noises of cars in the background and a tin can dropping let you know that you're not alone, but you're not welcome either. The graphics don't help, which is a great thing. Almost every enemy you face is either some tattoo'd up thug looking for a fight, or some guy with a messed up face and demented smile, usually with some strange uniform to go along with it. The more regular looking people in the game are broad shoulder'd and taller than you, and the other model for the male characters is a short fat guy, it adds to the surreal feeling the game gives you. The short version, the gameplay is a frustrating grind and eventually is hard just for the sake of being hard about 6 hours in, with Rags 2 Riches this is more or less remedied, still challenging though. Don't expect a gangster Deus Ex or anything, just a unique shooter with a nice setting. The plot is nothing special, but the atmosphere is incredible. I say give this game definiately give this game a go with the Rags 2 Riches mod, I wouldn't say theres too much replayability in doing the whole game over again, but I would definately play the first level or 2 over and over.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 20, 2014

  Let us get one thing straight - this ain't Quake. Punishingly difficult to begin with, Kingpin is a deep, dark, and atmospheric shooter with RPG elements that stands the test of time. The voice acting is great, the script is full of unnecessary swears, and the game makes you fight for every kill you make.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 24, 2017

  Classic old game. The single player campaign is good but the multiplayer is great and a lot of fun even today (check out the Kingpin discussions for more information). Make sure you give Bagman a try :)
• gamedeal user

  Jan 12, 2016

  Kingpin is a very 90's game. It's a game very in-line with the "screw the censors let's have violence and swearing" mindset from around the same time that gave us games like Doom and Postal. Unfortunately this backfired for the game since it released around the same time as the Columbine shootings. Which gained it a great deal of controversy and seemingly didn't improve the sales of the game. The premise of the game is you are a criminal who is beaten by several thugs in an alley. You pick up a lead pipe and decide to get revenge on the criminal organization that runs the city. The storyline is extremely minimalistic and there isn't much to get attatched to. The main protagonist isn't particularly well fleshed out and the motivations of the characters are never elaborated upon. This gets into the brunt of my complaints with the game. The game feels like it lacks focus. The game starts out as a semi-stealth game before you get any good weapons or upgrades. Once you get access to a few decent weapons it turns into a straight up run and gun shooter. There's a mechanic where you can talk to NPCs in the world and even enemies if you put your weapon away. But it feels a little half baked since you typically trigger their aggro by accident and have to quickload. The writing of the characters was also pretty terrible. With enemies yelling "FUCKER" frequently as soon as you're spotted. However, I can see why Kingpin got a cult-like following after release. The game takes place in a 1930's styled dystopian city. All of the characters resemble 1940's mobster charicatures and you eventually gain access to a tommy gun. However, all of the dialogue is very 90s, and you see more modern inventions like monorails and helicopters. It has this strangely surreal vibe to it that reminds me of similar games like Manhunt although I don't know if it was intentional or not. It also has wonderfully good AI for the time that actually follows you through vents and up ladders. The game also does have this unique sense of progression. Where you start out the game waking up in the gutter and progressively become more powerful and influential. Lastly there are a lot of clear influences from films like the Big Lebowski and Pulp Fiction. With the antagonist of the game being a clear parody of Marcellus Wallace from the latter. I wouldn't say Kingpin is a bad game but you have to go into it being aware it's a very mediocre one. I only recommend this game to people who are overly curious about old first person shooters who are willing to accept the game for it's very rough edges.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 18, 2015

  'I'm gonna bury those two motherfuckers.' Kingpin opens with a cutscene in which the player character utters the above line after rising up from a beating with a swollen face. It tells a simple tale of revenge, or rather, -taking a cue from the Cypress Hill album that the game borrows tracks from- a tale of going from 'Rags to Riches'. You'll be going from town to town -taking down small-time mob bosses along the way- until you confront the current Kingpin to exact your revenge and usurp his throne. As for the journey, right from the first moment it becomes apparent that it will be a raw, brutal, harsh and above all else, very messy one (and unashamedly so). Even though it is gritty, Xatrix's underdog may very well be the most aesthetically pleasing game to date utilizing the idTech2 engine. Where the other games that are based on the same technology are quick to betray their Quake II origins, Kingpin has a style and feel of its own thanks to the developers' meticulous work on the visual side of their creation. Beautifully textured and elegantly lighted, every single map therein has a life-like scale and quality to it. Though the meshes themselves are not more than a handful, the stylized characters also benefit from the top-notch 2D art, offering a great variety due to the three-way skinning that Xatrix coded in. The sound design is also of high standard; from the footstep sounds to the voiceovers of the NPCs, everything fits perfectly to the fictional world the developers try to portray. Simply put, the game oozes with atmosphere. The fact that this is the one and only shooter of the period that feels better without background music should alone be enough of a testament for the said quality. But make no mistake, even within its era's boundries, Kingpin is a hard and unforgiving game. Rather than going Quake, it expects you to play in its own terms, that is, to traverse carefully and try to get the upper hand on your enemies. If you do not comply to that, don't expect your experience to be any different than a novice's in the midst of an old-school deathmatch wherein all the other players are seasoned enough to navigate the map perfectly and are capable of ripping you to shreds in a matter of seconds. Play it as intended though and you'll quickly discover that Kingpin is one of the most visceral and satisfying shooter experiences of the 90s. Xatrix adds a few touches of their own to the engine to spice it up and expand its functionality. The most prominent are the ability of robbing the downed of their bucks which you use to buy weapons and stuff from specialized shops known as 'Pawn-o-matic's or hiring goons (two max) to back you up, alongside interacting with NPCs through the use of positive and negative conversation commands. But the most pleasing of it all is surely the impeccable pathfinding of the NPCs, especially the ones to be hired to fight alongside you: they run, jump and crouch their way through every single obstacle without a hitch to keep up with you. In fact, I spent two-thirds of my seven-hour trek with two on my side and there was only a single time where they needed extra care on my part. I was constantly surprised by the fact that they were able to traverse the map from one side to the other without an additional command to find me, as if they were not computer but human-controlled. I believe Kingpin is one of the better shooters of the late 90s. It doesn't reinvent the genre like Half-Life did. Instead, just like its engine-brethren SiN, Daikatana and Soldier of Fortune, it aims for a more classical approach. Its strength lies not in its ingenuity, but in its solid design sensibilities. It has an overarching theme that is full of style and backed up by a ghetto tale told through cutscenes, offers a highly visceral yet never offending combat experience on top and builds up on an already solid engine without introducing any bugs or breaking it. I only wish that it had a longer campaign or an expansion pack of sorts. If it had been kept, the slightly non-linear feel of the first episode would have been welcome too. Recommended for fans of old-school. Don't forget to answer the phone. 'What's the count?' 'Good... Real good.'
• gamedeal user

  Mar 26, 2014

  Most underrated old school game. Best of its kind. This is one of the black sheeps of the 1990 known for its extreme violent content and abusive language
• gamedeal user

  Mar 20, 2022

  bring out the remaster!
• gamedeal user

  Dec 23, 2022

  I got fed up of waiting for the Reloaded Remaster and took a punt on the original Kingpin instead - a classic game in which I still own a big box physical copy of, and to this day remains in mint condition. Despite fond memories, this game has not aged well in places especially with navigating the interface. The highly recommended MH patch solves a lot of issues with resolutions and textures but the cumbersome menu and configuration screens are a nightmare to move around. The game itself feels a bit floaty by today's standards and the combat is clunky and unresponsive. Other games of this era just did it better and are more playable even today. I will once again turn my attention to the Reloaded version if it ever comes out and if not, Kingpin: Life of Crime will remain as a memory of a great era of gaming and a underrated title of its time.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 8, 2016

  I just made an offer on this IP to the company in charge of selling Interplay's properties. Soon, Kingpin will be a revitalized property!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2021

  Ну бля, сколько? Немало... Бля, ты мне мозги не еби, я спрашиваю сколько! Эээ... 65 + ещё 20 и из.. Ладно, заткнись. Нам надо поймать эту суку и закопать на месте. А у тебя что к нему, что то личное? Бля, пошёл нахуй! Я сказал дать ему пизды и кинуть где нибудь.