Kingpin: Life of Crime caused a bit of controversy in 1999, and it will now be revived.

We’re not sure if everyone remembers the original, so let’s quickly recap what happened two decades ago: back then, Xatrix Entertainment (now called Grey Matter Interactive – Cyberia – 1994, Cyberia 2: Resurrection – 1995, Redneck Rampage – 1997, Quake II Mission Pack: The Reckoning – 1998…) was working on this FPS. The game used the id Tech 2 engine (they probably had it after the Quake II expansion), and it had your typical revenge plot: the protagonist gets beaten to a bloody pulp at the beginning of the story, but he comes to his senses and vowes revenge on everyone, especially the Kingpin, the boss of the underworld. Interplay, the publisher, timed the release somewhat awkwardly (it came out in the Summer of ’99, shortly after the shooting that happened in the Columbine High School), and several retailers removed it from their line-up, even though it had been somewhat critically acclaimed.

Now, a remaster is heading our way. It’s being developed by Slipgate Interactive, with Interplay and 3D Realms as the publishers, according to the announcement.

The Quake II engine will likely remain („Kingpin: Reloaded brings new life to the Quake II engine classic.”), but there will be a few changes. There will be ultrawide and 4K support, the rebalanced gameplay will contain a new quest and dialogue system, and we can also expect a Classic and the Enhanced mode, too – if you don’t want modernised visuals, you can keep the ’99 charm with the Classic option. You can also use a controller as well (for a good reason).

If the upgradeable weapons (Tommy gun, bazooka…) and the location-based damage system aren’t something you prefer, you can also choose the No Violence mode, where the violence is gone, but Kingpin’s bootlickers’ colourful language will remain.

Kingpin: Reloaded is set to launch this year on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. We can likely expect no Epic Games Store-exclusivity, due to the remaster already having a Steam page.

Source: Gematsu

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