It seems that grifting some of Grand Theft Auto's good/bad publicity in order to court the wrath of soap-box senators and lime-lighting litigators is a popular pastime these days, and Eidos does just that with 25 to Life for PS2.

Oh sure, there's lots of gratuitous manslaughter, cop-killing as certain as manifest destiny, plus an unremitting earful of apparently requisite foul-mouthed overindulgences, so let's get behind this game and protect our First Amendment Rights, right? Don't bother.

25-to-Life is bad in the original sense of the word: horrible. Looks like crap, plays like a stick in the mud and tells a "gangsta" story that makes no sense.

At its best, 25 to Life is shamelessly shallow schlock prostituting itself for some underserved attention with nothing to offer otherwise except maybe a blueprint on how not to make a videogame.