I managed to finagle my way into the 25 to Life beta about two weeks ago. The beta only let you mess around with the multiplayer element of the game, so I can't really speak to the controversy surrounding the single player game. You know, the whole being able to use people as hostages and kill cops.

Actually, that's not exactly true. The muliplayer game lets you kill tons of cops, or gang bangers, depending on what side you are on. The online element of the game, which I played on the Playstation 2, is basically a bloody version of cops and robbers. You choose to be either a cop or a banger and then shoot it out with each other in third or first-person view.

I thought the game was a lot of fun. The graphics and gameplay are still being tweaked (I heard the beta version was months old) but what I saw was still worth owning.

The game allows you to customize your characters, both gang and cop versions of them. After choosing the look of your character you get to pick out weapons.

The weapon selection is amazing. If you're a cop you can choose batons, Tasers, tear gas and a rather large assortment of appropriate guns. Gang members get to arm with things like baseball bats, malatov cocktails and an assortment of street guns.

I noticed that some of the gameplay and balancing elements mentioned at E3 weren't in the beta. There were no people in the game that you could grab as human shields. And while you can arrest bad guys by stunning and then walking over them, I couldn't tell if it then penalized them anymore than would killing a bad guy.

The game also uses an action button that opens door and lets you interact with the enviroment, like vaulting railings or climbing things.

The game's modes in the beta included a straight-up death match, raid and tag.

In raid mode the law enforcement side has to raid a criminal hangout, snatch the stash and then get it back to a SWAT van. It's pretty straight forward and can be quite a bit of fun.

Tag, was my favorite mode in the game. In this mode you play on different gangs and have to try to tag up a neighborhood with your graffiti. If you manage to hit all of the pre-set tag spots and hold them, you win the game. If you can't manage this, the winner is the one with the most points. Points are awarded for kills and tags.

Although this sounds an awful lot like any other shooter, the unique weapon load-outs, action button and urban setting separate the game enough to make it fun. I found myself playing this a lot more than I had time for.

Granted I ran into some major glitches, like falling through walls and a first-person mode that didn't show my own weapons, but I've been told the game has been much improved since the beta code was released.

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