Painkiller Black Edition

First off I don't own this on GoG, I have the disc version which is actually a very nice shelf item from an era of generic DVD cases. I played it back in the day and wanted to love it and so still dig it out now and then to see if I can warm to it. You hear a lot of talk about how Painkiller is a throwback to classic FPS games and reimplements what made them great. It isn't and it doesn't, here's why: The makers of this game completely forgot about level design. Remember your favourite Doom levels where it was obvious a tremendous amount of effort had gone into making them varied and intriguing? Remember the sprawling levels of Quake where you could work out how to access secret areas by investigating the structure of your environment, remember playing Quake II or Half Life and feeling like you were actually progressing through a real place meeting bigger and bigger challenges along the way? Painkiller has none of these things, you fight waves of enemies in generic environments and it gets boring. Quickly. Some later levels are a little more interesting but the mechanic is still wave based, the opposite of classic shooters where enemies with different strengths and attributes were placed in areas with thought in order to present a challenge to the player. So anybody recommending this as being reminiscent of classic FPS games like Duke3D, Doom, Quake I&II etc either hasn't played those games or can't tell the difference. It's much more like Serious Sam without the self-conscious humour (Serious Sam knows it's dumb, Painkiller thinks it's clever) and enemy variation. Maybe with shades of kkrieger in there too. It might sound like I hate this game but I don't, I would say it's a very average wave/arena shooter where progression from a room or area is based on how many of the same generic enemies you can mow down. If that's your thing then you'll have fun, just don't buy it thinking you'll be reliving the glory days of early FPS games because the magic of great level design just isn't there.

And seems to run on Intel only graphics but the sound on the HP is horrid. Needs a subwoofer on your laptop for proper effect. Had to run this thru the Razer Booster to get it to run properly. Alot of graphics issues if I didn't. Always addictive. And how the metal music jumps around is fun :) They don't make games like they used to.

This game is old-school to a fault. It's good to tear armies of monster to shreds, but that's is literally all you will do. if that's what you're looking for, go for it. But for anyone that likes a little more to their FPS, you'll get bored very quickly.

The game started out interesting enough, after the first several waves I had practically played the entire game,[spoilers] the first 2 bosses are literally the same enemy but the second being bigger. In a game all about guns there doesn't seem to be much balance, when I got the spinning blade I really didnt need any other weapon since I could just hold the mouse button and have every enemy swarm to its doom. Needless to say that got old fast. Don't get me wrong I like Doom and Quake, but this game lives nowhere near up to the standard those games put up.

Painkiller is one of the worst FPS games I have ever played. Gameplay isn't just generic, it's a poor imitation *of* generic FPS gameplay. Controls are imprecise and twitchy. Character and level design is dull and amateurish. Music is grating, repetitive loops of bland garage rock. Visuals are ugly with lots of pop-up. Painkiller can be broken down like so: Kill enemies within a confined space, advance to next area, magic walls appear locking you into another confined space to kill more enemies. Rinse and repeat. I've already wasted more time than I should have playing this game and writing this review, so I'll conclude by saying if you want to play an FPS that is actually fun with the challenging mechanics present in earlier titles, pick up one of the Doom or Serious Sam games instead of this utter garbage.