Painkiller

The Good
I had completed my task of beating the top rated and hyped up shooters of 2004 and being impressed by the visuals and gameplay of Farcry, UT2004, Half Life 2 and the little disappointing Doom 3, I had one last game to nail and that was “Painkiller”. 2004 certainly was a good year for the FPS genre, we saw a lot of varieties in the shooters, from horror to sci-fi to a debuting tropical tactical shooter, oh yeah there was Halo 2 but no real FPS fan cares about that garbage. This particular game by a relatively unknown company called People Can Fly added into the variety by bringing back the old school fps style in the modern age. Yes this game is supposed to bring back the gameplay of the original Doom, Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3d etc. But not quite.

Painkiller certainly bases its core gameplay upon the elements of those titles. But the thing that makes Painkiller have it's own identity is that it has excluded many of the famous cliches, such as finding keycards to open doors and carved in a little twist of it's own. The gameplay is simple, blast through hundreds of baddies and after you cleared an area move to another checkpoint until it's time for the exit to spawn. Each enemy after killed leaves back their soul, collect 66 of these and you morph into this badass demon. Oh and trust me the effect given for that feature is spot on.

Also you have something known as Tarot cards. While being extremely fitting to the game's theme, these cards can ease the frustration you may face in a level. Each level has an optional condition you must fulfill and if you do, you unlock a tarot card. Conditions range from finding all secret areas, playing a level with a particular weapon only, to beating a boss in under a specified time. These cards are either Silver or Gold, silver having 2 slots and Gold having 3. Silver cards are the equivalent of a passive skill in a RPG, while gold cards can only be used once and last for a particular time limit. Now if you're really good with shooters, you won't rely much on these tarot cards, in fact the game can be beaten without them. But they can help you greatly in fulfilling the other tarot card conditions, if you've played the game you'll understand what I mean. No matter what this does add depth into the game, you will think about which card combination to choose which will help you collect all souls or take down the bosses in less than 4 minutes. Therefore Painkiller is not simply a mindless shooter.

The three most important aspects of a FPS is Weapons, Enemies and Level Design. Painkillers succeeds greatly in those areas. The weapons are kind of unique and at the same time uses modern aesthetics such as alternate fire. Each weapon acts as 2 weapons for e.g. The Shotgun is also a Freezer and the shuriken gun is also an electro-gun, you get the point. Also what surprises me is that this somewhat cheesy combination works very well. The freezer compliments the shotgun the best, so does the lightning and shuriken and the Rocket Launcher/Chaingun combination is the most chaotic thing I've seen since Unreal Tournament's redeemer. The Stakegun is insane fun, it's fun and satisfying to see stakes impaling the monsters to the wall.

The developers have certainly paid attention to the monsters and bosses in regards to concept, modeling and detailing. I'll admit they certainly lack the personality the monsters in the Doom and Halflife series have but 99% of modern fps games do. PK's enemies do come close to that greatness no doubt, there is lot of diversity here, from monks to old haggard ladies to bikers to Arabian warriors, there is just so much here. The bosses? Some of them are freaking huge and are really intimidating especially that Necrogiant!!! Doom 3's Cyberdemon is a joke compared to the intimidating and size factor of these guys.

Level design? Seriously, one of the best in any game, any genre. There are a few which are just “good” for e.g the train station, cemetery etc. But some will blow your mind. They set an atmosphere, engross you in, make your keyboard wet with drool! Speaking of drooling, that's all you're going to be doing on the last stage entitled “Hell”. I'm serious I was taken away but the final output and concept behind it, very unpredictable. I was expecting the cliched look you got from similar themed games. But props to whoever was responsible for this level. Overrated shooters like Halo are aeons away from this kind of level design. Simply put the level design is this game's highest point.

The graphics are perfect so is the sound. From the creepy whispers at the start of a level to the Celtic like chanting at the end. Music is well composed and fits well into the levels. The physics go on par with Halflife 2. It's no secret that they both use the Havok physics engine but it's implemented well into the game. From the falling rubble to the ragdolls getting impaled into the wall. The technological aspect of this game is pure win!

The Bad
You're probably going “Hey where the hell is any mention of the story”. Well the story is the weakest link in this game, no doubt the plan looks good. You play a guy Daniel driving his wife to her birthday dinner, he takes his eyes of the wheel and he bangs into a truck. They both die she ascends to heaven he is stuck in Purgatory because of a few sins. He is asked by Samael to kill 4 generals of Lucifer and then he can ascend and meet his wife.

Sadly while it sounds interesting at first, the execution is bad. Sure they have put in a lot of work on the cut scenes which happen after every chapter. But it's just not interesting at all even though I love games based on the concept of hell. I feel this is where they could have done a lot more, like have back stories to each level or something. There is just nothing that motivates me to take interest in the story except going “Oh boy nice filler cutscene there, I think i can see Eve's nipple..DAMN YOU PASTIES!!!”.

Now I did write a whole paragraph on tarot cards, so sorry here is another one. Some of the Tarot card conditions are just ridiculous. If you're going to try and unlock all tarot cards expect excessive frustration, they should have put that on the box cover. And speaking of tarot cards, well some of them are either gimmicky or just useless. Not saying all are but what I really would like was some more thought put into it.

Another gripe is that, 2 levels are locked out from the 3 difficulties and only available on Trauma, the final difficulty level.

The Bottom Line
Now for a simple game like Painkiller, what makes it so entertaining even in the modern day when you got more complicated titles like Farcry and System Shock? It takes the fun factor of olden shooters, pushes forward a lot of eye candy and eargasms, drives insanity into your keyboard and tops it off with some well thought of ideas. It is sad that it lacks a good story and a bit annoying factors regarding the tarot cards. But at least this game put on more on the table than so called “revolutionary” titles such as Halo did. Painkiller is not everyone's cup of tea but if you enjoy modern mindless shooters such as Serious Sam and such you will love this game. The Old School revival tag is not some gimmick it's for real!

PS: If you're not going to play this at least check out the hell level from screenshots or youtube.

The Good
Almost everything apart from the initially hard to get secrets and the propensity for the game to crash and corrupt gamesave files.

The Bad
Hopelessly incompetent programming and quality testing has resulted in a game that is not worth playing, in spite of showing many strong points. Game saves often become corrupt to the point of having to start at an earlier point in the game, or even a new game outright.

The Bottom Line
Don't buy it, unless you don't mind end after end of serious game bugs.

The Good
Seems Serious Sam really made a dent out there, as we are officially seeing the first clone of it right here in DreamCatcher's Painkiller, an FPS that's heavy on the action and light on the brains.

Just like "Serious", Painkiller is nothing but a shooting gallery on steroids. A throwback to the more simplified early days of FPS gaming where you'd walk into a seemingly empty hall with a big weapon or power-up floating in the air and as soon as you grab it all exists close and a gazillion enemies spawn instantly coming for you from all sides. Forget tactics, forget realism, it's all about killing the bad guys in a frenzy of bullets before they get you. And like Serious Sam proved, that concept is more entertaining than you would first believe. You can't say it's groundbreaking but it sure is entertaining... for a while anyway.

This mold of simple yet entertaining gameplay is the one Painkiller takes and coats with a dark theme much like Quake's as you are not a cartoony hero defending earth from alien invaders, but instead take the role of a "Hitman from Heaven". A wandering soul that's tasked with cleaning out the Armies of Satan from the purgatory as exchange for him getting into heaven and rejoining with his long dead wife, taking the souls of his enemies as he dispatches them... The game thus plays in the purgatory, which as imagined by the developers looks pretty much like a distorted and dark version of earth (think Silent Hill). As another reviewer noted while the level design itself is completely straightforward, the layout and art direction is not so, and manages to be a standout feature in the game, with some pretty impressive locations like the sanitarium and the opera house deserving some serious praise.

I don't know what engine the developers used but the results are pretty impressive. Not only on the levels themselves, but also on the enemies (which also have localized damage and rag-doll physics) and special effects such as when you trigger your "god mode" (acquired by collecting a determined number of souls) and which blurs and distorts your vision and surrounds all the enemies with an eerie glow (and also allows you to kill them just by looking at them!)

As for the enemies and weapons, they are all your standard "darkie" stuff you know from games like Quake or Blood, with the inclusion of some rather impressive asian-themed enemies and the hyper-gigantic bosses that steal the show and prove to be the most exciting opponents in the single-player game. As an original touch the game throws mini-objectives for you to complete in each level, usually dealing with a certain number you must reach in some of the game's many stats (killing X amount of enemies, recovering X amount of souls, etc.), should you complete those, the game rewards you with tarot cards that can be equiped before you go into the next level, and which have all sorts of different effects that you can call forth at anytime to aid you in the fights (such as stopping time, dealing cuadruple damage, etc.) a nice idea that has proved itself in other games and works like a charm here also.

Finally, the multiplayer component (the real deal-maker here) is superbly designed with enough options and quality gameplay to satisfy the most jaded frag-addict.

Oh, and the cutscenes are reeaaally good, and the goth heavy metal soundtrack Kicks ASS.

The Bad
Well, it IS a clone of Serious Sam... With everything bad that entails...: A braindead action game with braindead enemies and braindead gameplay. Continued playing either takes you to a zen-like nirvana state or makes your brain explode, as it's the same retarded shoot-everything-that-moves thing over and over and over again....

It also has some rare bugs that get you stuck in a pixel and crash the entire thing... but I'm sure that's going to be solved eventually.

The Bottom Line
It's simple enough: Liked Serious Sam? How about some Quake flavor on top of it? That's Painkiller. If you liked Serious Sam then "more of the same" doesn't exactly pose a problem to you, so you are sure to enjoy every action-soaked moment of it. However the rest of us with somewhat more diverse interests might consider the novelty but quickly forget about it as soon as anything barely more interesting comes along.