I played through the original release (sans expansion) around 2005 and seemed to have fond memories of it, but for some reason never felt compelled to return to it. Couldn't recall why, until I recently bought it on sale here and tried it out once more. I've been playing a lot of SP GZDoom and Quake lately, and something I've noticed is that when you have experienced mappers, with enemy and item placement know-how, the flow and rhythm of combat can often be absolutely sublime. Games like this, where you're boxed in and artificially restricted, are the antithesis of that. Map design and layout are important considerations in the true classics. Also, the novelty of limp ragdolls flying around everywhere wore off shortly after all developers began using it 20 years ago. It's definitely a good thing to see a return to custom death animations in some more recent games. This over-reliance on Havok has been just lazy. On a positive note, Painkiller has very nice textures and architecture. The final boss level (Hell) was incredible back in the day. Some very cool weapon designs as well. I planned to go ahead and play through this again anyway, since I paid for it, but for some inexplicable reason, the performance is all over the place. That definitely should not be happening on the PC I'm currently using.
