KINGPIN

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

OK, OK I suppose I must admit it. The reason I bought this game
over a year ago was the rumour that it was so violent it was going
to be banned. So I decided to pre-order it and await the
shock/horror stories in the newspapers about how gentle animal
loving Johnny was turned into a mass murderer after having played
this game. They never materialised unfortunately and I can't see
myself suddenly going that way either - if I do it'll require more
than this I am afraid.

I'm not really a fan of first person shooters - I played and
enjoyed Wolfenstein and Doom and to a lesser extent Hexen; Quake
and Duke Nukem I completed out of pure hard-headedness. I can't
say I enjoyed either or found them challenging. "Kingpin" on the
other hand certainly held my attention although there were times I
felt I should have doing something more productive (like the
washing-up for example).  It has a number of very positive points
- it's easy to pickup, it's mindless and most important it isn't
very long (I figure about 20 hours play tops).

Gory? Well there's lots of blood around but none of the characters
in these graphics could ever be mistaken for a real human. It's
hard to quantify the graphics - a slight improvement over the
creatures in Duke Nukem I suppose.  Although they're meant to be
real people they look much more like aliens.

There is a semblance of a plot - you start out on Skid Row having
been beaten up as a warning not to interfere with the Boss. I'm
not sure what you originally did, but whatever it was you swear
your vengeance. Next job is to make your way up town slaughtering
all the nasties that get in your way and finally defeating the
boss to become Kingpin yourself. As usual there is no stat
increase but you get to obtain better armour and weapons along the
way. You can also hire cronies to help you out in some scenarios.

Otherwise it's what you'd expect. My only grouch was that in
narrow areas your cronies get in your way making movement
difficult or impossible; in the final sequence I lost one of them
who refused to follow me. I assume it was a bug.

I'm not a connoisseur of this type of game so I'm not sure how to
rate it. I've got to play "Half -Life" sometime - then we'll see
how it stands up.













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