Painkiller: Overdose

More of a large expansion or total conversion than a true sequel. It's on the same engine, it has the same gameplay, the content, however is mostly new (also, it's from a different studio). Let's call it a spinoff. This time, you play as... honestly, who cares? Painkiller is about fast past, non-stop fps action, and on that front, Overdose definitely delivers. Still, the originial is miles ahead of this. It had better level design, architecture, modelling, and overall better gameplay. Even if it was quite unbalanced, when it came to difficulty - Overdose, however is all Over the place in that aspect (the final bossfight is the most ridiculous thing I've ever encountered). The first step in turning Painkiller into a repetitive arena-shooter was Battle out of hell, this is the second step. Thankfully, It's still a long way until Recurring evil (which was just garbage), but the Painkiller games were slowly but surely losing their edge at this point. I had no idea how perfect the original Painkiller was, until i played this spinoff. Up until then it felt like a dumb, simple, but fun game. Compared to Overdose, it's brilliance truly shines through. By no means Overdose is a bad game, but it is a disappointing continuation of the Painkiller games.

This game is a spin-off (?) of Painkiller, where in Overdose you play an character, that is a love-child between an angel father and demon mother. Because of that none of the sides accept him and he get's his angel wings ripped of by Cerberus, the 3 headed helldog and Samael (he seem like an angel to me), who imprisons him somewehere in Hell. Anyway, something happens and our hal demon/half angel character gets free and seeks revenge. You the player will help him do that. I played the game on Daydream (easy mode). If you play on harder modes, you can unlock different magical cards (Tarot?), that you can use durring th missions. For me, the graphics are still beautifull, all the leves looks different, interesting weapons and enemies. The average time was 20 minutes, that I need for finish each level. The game has 3 Chapters and each chapter has about 5 or 6 levels. Every chapter has and end boss. My favorit levels were: the desert/egyptian, the japanese, the vikings, the clown park and the air combat levels.

Let's there be stated few things. Yes, this supposed to be free fan made sequel when people were developing this. Yes, their project was picked up to be released commercially or not at all, even for free. This is how fans have seen things to continue after PK and BOOH happened, it has some flaws, some imperfections that you can expect from someone who has visions what PK essence is. End result was quite different because there's different theme and protagonist too. Just like mythologic counterpart, Belial is master of portals that jump across the realms Daniel Garner visited at the same time or is throwed to completely anew. Some of them are pretty messed up but that's good thing, they reek of opressive dark gloomy atmosphere like in twisted nightmares, out of place surreal experiences. Weapons mostly look the same but some of them work differently, so do new enemies (they have tweaked AI, some have it reused between different types). What about maps? there where roughness of gameplay shows that this project is fan made. I'd say it's a mixed bag of the best moments with good ammo/health ratio but not so hot on monsters populating them. Other levels have fitting monsters and level design but lack of ammo or health. Also music, because every map has different theme, you'll be hearing mix of techno or industrial instead gothic or metal. So it's up for you to decide running them on Trauma or unlocking cards because game is not balanced for anything higher than Nightmare. For normal Insomnia/Nighmare run without trying to get all cards on the first run is very fun game but a lot harder original. Oneliners and some weapons hints that Overdose is to Painkiller what Shadow Warrior was for Duke Nukem 3D. So if PKBlacEd deserves 5 stars why I giving 4/5 stars game all five? Let's say I like it more than PK but not more than BOOH. For standalone game this is 4/5, as standalone expansion (best of all these release later) I give 5/5. Enjoy your time and don't rush it. ;-p

I had high hopes for this game because BooH and Painkiller were classic, amazing games. This is very similar, but very different. I would have told them to name this game Overdose instead of putting the Painkiller title in it *On its own, not a part of the series, it could be a good game theoretically*. I found the character Belial to be very annoying with the repetitive cheesy one liners that get annoying on the first level. I am pushing myself to beat the game but frankly after the first few levels I wanted to call it quits. The game gets repetitive and the pace is annoying, unlike BooH and Painkiller. This is a game that you will most likely not enjoy as much as the original. Booh and Painkiller are both great games but this just feels like a slap in the face honestly. The Good-Some levels are very nice, and the weapon models are somewhat neat The Bad-Cards are challenging to get, and as well the one liners are awful. To paint you a picture imagine if every ten kills in the regular Painkiller you heard the character say *Taste like Chicken*. Be warned, this IS a watered down version of Painkiller, I would say get this on sale. You will want to like this but it will be hard.