Painkiller: Overdose

...than the original Painkiller. I like some of the weapons in this game better than Daniel's weapons in the original Painkiller, much more organic and high-poly with better animations. Levels didn't seem quite as memorable, though that may be because the original was my "first impression". You know, the doom of most sequels ("hey, this isn't the way the first one ______!") Belial was also forgettable to me, more of a "Hey, didn't I just shoot all your brethren in the first game? So why aren't you DEAD?" But hey, nobody plays games like this for the story, just point and shoot. Simple things can be good! (Looking at you, ASCII-based RPGs) I have always been EXTREMELY upset I couldn't play all the levels in both games with the ENTIRE weapon set, Painkiller's weapons and Overdose's. That would be friggin' epic like Unreal Gold (if you cheat, at least). Sadly, this addon is totally independent of the original and never the two shall meet code-wise unless there's a mod somewhere I'm not aware of. So five stars for the weapons and more stuff to shoot, four for the levels and four for very, VERY short length. 4.333 stars overall.

If you liked the first painkiller I'm sure you'll love this game because it's just more of that. The level design is a little worse and the difficulty curve isn't great, but I had a ton of fun with this game because painkiller kicks ass. I'd play painkiller black first, but if you already beat that and just want more painkiller, you should definetly play this game. It's a little shorter than painkiller black but eh I paid a dollar for it so I wasn't expecting a super long game.

I'm a big fan of the original Painkiller. Out of nostalgia, I decided to reheat this spin-off for a quick meal. The game was an irritating dance of death and loading screens. The game has its moments. The locations and enemies are beautifully designed. The gameplay is not. Enemies get unfairly difficult and the game likes to spam them at you. There is never enough ammo. The classic shotgun now takes time to freeze enemies, blocking you from shooting! A third of all enemies and locations was recycled from the original. The game is also a technical mess. All from shooting effects not being bound to a proper audio slider to a cacophony of loud beeping noises when battling the final boss. The framerate isn't consistent too. Did I mention the long loading times? After every death you will gaze upon the loading screen wondering why you're doing this. This game was supposed to be a fan mod. Various shenanigans resulted in an unfinished stand-alone game. The same process would be repeated at least 3 more times, each with even worse results. My nostalgia lied to me. I feel cheated out of the 5 hours I spent on it.

The original Painkiller is one of my favorite shooters: while not flawless, it’s an unapologetic slaughterfest filled with satisfying weapons and blood-pumping fights. I was equally excited and dubious about playing this standalone expansion, which suffers from a mixed reputation. And… I can totally see why that is. It has everything that was good in the first game, the badass guns, the arenas, the hordes of enemies, the blissfully repetitive gunplay… But it also doubles down on everything that was bad. Painkiller had few healing items? In Overdose they’re barely existent. Painkiller had some unbalanced enemies? Overdose has them in droves. Painkiller had long loading times? In Overdose, they’re straight-up excruciating. Yet, this is not that bad a game. Overdose reproduces enough of what made Painkiller so good for it to be worth playing… In the right circumstances. Once I swallowed my pride and resolved myself to play on a lower difficulty than usual (Insomnia instead of Trauma), I had quite a bit of fun battling my way through it. Most of the new enemies are interesting to fight and a pretty good job was done with the weapons: the reskinned ones feel even better than Painkiller’s, while the new guns are creative. Plus, the game nails the atmosphere. The weapon design, the look of the enemies, the set dressing... It’s very imaginative and feels visually and tonally consistent with Painkiller, while also having its own vibe. Frankly, the aesthetics of Overdose are just plain cool: you can’t really say no to a game that lets you play as a wisecracking demon-angel hybrid, fighting on asteroids and wielding a shotgun that uses bones as ammo. In short, Overdose is a very flawed game that started as a fan-mad mod, and definitely ended up feeling like one... But it’s not all that bad, I think. It’s not great, but it’s well-priced and playable enough to be worth a shot – at least, if like me you’ve played through Painkiller dozens of times and can’t get enough of it.

I dont own this on GOG but i do on Steam. I am a Huge PCF (People Can Fly) and Painkiller fan and have played through all of them. To get to the point here is a Partial Quote of my Steam Review - "At the time of release it was good to have more Painkiller, another story, but it was so unrefined and all over the place. Modern systems that are now able to perform natively above 60fps, particularly anything over 120fps will break the game. I died close to about 30 times in the first 2 minutes of the 1st level because of the physics and the broken difficulty ramp of the enemies. Even on Daydream (easy) the enemies will 2-shot on a graze. The physics damage from Fire, Heat Waves from Lava will break and multiply their damage exponentially. The Weapons are very unbalanced and the damage they do is generally way too little, like the Bone Shotgun can take up to 5 shots to kill a basic entry level enemy. The best weapon in the game is the Blade Cube, spam r-click all day on Sub-Boss and Boss level enemies and just kill most in seconds. Story starts off well, falls off right when you finish the first Chapter, and the end is beyond underwhelming. Audio and Sounds, decent sound track, not awesome, just decent. Then you have the Voice bits, which are so repetitive cycling through 5 of the same voicelines constantly... 'mmm tastes like chicken' or 'Kiss my shiny Angel xxx'... etc. Level designs are Okay, a couple repeats from the previous Painkiller. Just some bad design choices where I was able to break out of the boundaries multiple times and explore the maps which have a bunch of unused and unpolished assets, but nothing notable. The enemies are recolored/textured and reused messes, some are resized. Very few are original to this version. The Final boss fight... picture Michael from the Office biting down on his lower lip in a painfully cringe manner. Its that bad. I would rate this 4/10"