Painkiller Black Edition

I tried to love Painkiller. It seemed like my kind of game: fast-paced with lots of enemies to kill with lots of weapons. Yet it overshoots its goal of recreating classic FPS action and lands in a frustrating realm of repetitious and boring gameplay. How could a game about slaying demons with a stake gun be boring, you ask? It comes down to implementation: it seems to misinterpret the classic formula and opts instead for a checkpoint-based level progression that condemns you to fighting wave after wave of uninspired enemies while locked in a room until the game decides you've done enough. Miss one enemy, and you have to hunt him down and kill him before you can progress. Once you've done this a dozen times, the bareness of the game's formula will become apparent. I've been told that if I like Doom, I'll love Painkiller. Why this might be true, I have no idea. Doom is based on an essentially open level where you progress by finding keys to open locked doors. Painkiller, on the other hand, is often a shooter-on-rails, where you are guided into a room, forced to fight respawning waves of enemies, then allowed to progress to the next room where you do the same until the end of the level. Painkiller is far more similar to a game like Serious Sam, although unlike Serious Sam you don't get the outrageous weapons or bizarre enemies. Instead you are treated to wave after wave of boring enemies which you have to kill with weapons that, while original, are more frequently baffling than fun to use. You get the arcade-style gameplay without much else. Frankly, Painkiller is overrated. It really has little in common with the iD Software classics like Doom and Quake, and frankly your $10 could be better spent on any number of more modern FPS titles that not only look better, but are more fun and more satisfying than Painkiller. Better yet, just play the original Quake if you need your classic FPS fix and you won't regret wasting your time and money on Painkiller like I did.

If you like the old 3d shooters with less story and simplified gameplay, you can't go wrong with purchasing Painkiller. Lots of weapons, enemies and great level variety combined with excellent graphics makes it a must buy for every Doom or Blood fan. The best Part is that the Black Edition contains the "Battle out of Hell" expansion pack which adds about 8 hours of gameplay to the 12 hour long Painkiller campain.

This is a nice meaty FPS: minimal on plot, loaded for bear with ridiculous weapons and loads of enemies to mow down. OK, so literally you only get a few weapons in total, but each gun is actually two different weapons creatively combined in a single package. The fun part is that each function of the gun is usually not only completely different but can be combined in creative ways on the fly. The painkiller, your basic weapon for instance, can be used to cut down enemies like a chainsaw at close range, or alternately can shoot a harpoon-like weapon with a laser beam behind it. That means you can shoot the harpoon into enemies, ripping them off their feet, or set it across a tight space and let the beam burn into them as they come at you. OR you can start it spinning chainsaw style, then hit alternate fire, sending a spinning blade off in a strait direction that dices anything in its path. And that's just one of the weapon. I won't even go into the thing that shoots one foot long wooden stakes, and as a side bonus rapid fire lobs grenades. This leads to a surprising amount of options in combat and you will never find yourself bored with what you're presented with, and wading through waves of demons is always satisfying. That's not even mentioning the gigantic and compelling boss battles, the unlocking tarot card system that can make your bad-ass even bad-asser, or the turning into an unstoppable god/demon bit. Sure you're not going to be moved to tears by the plot, and enemy AI is a bit on the retarded side, but with a name like Painkiller you have to expect that. If you like action, buy this game, period.

No real puzzles here folks, just awesome graphics, creative gun combos and waves and waves of bad guys flying at you. Make no mistake, this is a throw back to the days of Serious Sam and Doom. There are lots of bad guys, and there is a stake gun. You can find a demo to try this out I'm sure, but this is one of the better "Ugg, me see. me kill." FPS games out there.

Painkiller does most big things right, but is marred by some odd and avoidable design problems. The graphics are lovely and the game runs very smoothly. The weapons are interesting and balanced. There don't seem to be any major or fatal bugs. The boss fights are excellent. Two problems with the game concern the sub-systems: soul-collection and tarot-cards, neither of which are well thought out and if anything detract from the game. The plot is execrably awful, to the point where I hit escape whenever a cutscene began. It is of course, eminently skippable, but one wonders why they bothered with it all given how bad and unnecessary it is. The biggest problem, though, is the checkpoint system, which I have to call "bugged", since you can break levels completely by activating checkpoints in the wrong order, something which is very easy to do in some levels. Made worse by the fact that *not* looking for obscure routes will cause you to miss secrets, and exploring thoroughly and carefully may cause you to break checkpoints. Other more minor complaints include the fact that the difficulty levels aren't allowed to *be* difficulty levels (i.e. ways people of different skill can enjoy the game), but have subsystems and levels swapped in and out, and that in many levels the enemy distribution is very repetitive. At least in this version all difficulty levels are unlocked from the beginning.