Trivia
In the year that Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were released, PC Gamer picked Painkiller as The FPS of the Year. Even the Editors were surprised at the outcome, as stated in the March 2004 Edition.
Contributed by
Santa 
(847) on Jun 06, 2008.
Painkiller was named #3 Game of the Year in the 14th Annual Computer Game Awards issue of Computer Games Magazine (March 2005).
Contributed by
PCGamer77 (3025) on Jan 21, 2008.
The latest patches (1.61 and higher) adds new graphic features, such as the 'Bloom' effect and more resolutions. Two more weapons are also added, an SMG with a Flame Thrower and another gun similar to the shotgun and Stake Gun.
Contributed by
Sadgasm (608) on Apr 28, 2006.
Painkiller is one of the few games I know that doesn't force real-time rendering for it's video display. Usually whenever a game or program has a graphic load that exceeds the hardware's performance it starts to "skip" the rendering of certain frames in order to mantain the timing of the animations as intended. This results in the familiar "frame-skipping" or "jumping" that we known so well.
Another alternative to this problem is to forget about trying to mantain real-time animation and draw every frame at the speed the hardware can manage, however this is hardly used for videogames and usually only appears as an option on 3D rendering programs. The reason for this can be seen on Painkiller and that's because if you play it on a machine that's below the reccomended specs, the game will be actually easier to play! As whenever the cpu load gets too high (which starts to happen when many enemies appear) the game goes into slo-mo!
Contributed by
Zovni (9139) on Dec 27, 2004.
On October 14, 2004, the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) announced that Painkiller was chosen as the official game for their $1,000,000 CPL World Tour. The competition maps are designed by Todd Rose, Richard Heath and Russel Meakim from Ritual Entertainment.
A month later, on November 20, 2004, the CPL announced that they had cut a deal with Dreamcatcher Interactive that gives them worldwide rights for the use of multiplayer painkiller in any online or live tournament with cash or merchandise prizes.
Contributed by
Sciere (118067) on Dec 13, 2004.
Daniel Garner, the hero of Painkiller, was originally envisioned and prototyped as slick, gun-toting Latin American with a wardrobe reminiscent of Miami Vice, before being reinvented as a the tough and troubled everyman he is in the final game.
In January 2004, four months prior to the release, a hefty multi-player alpha build was leaked to the internet. Dreamcatcher was unable to trace the source and could only warn fans that the leak was not representative for the final game.
Contributed by
Sciere (118067) on May 06, 2004.
