I played this once before and it was exactly as i remembered - the action is slick enough and you have to stay on your toes - their can literally be enemies around every corner and although they aren't very clever they are often tucked away out of sight and can do you serious damage before you've even seen them. There's a decent range of weapons though i did miss having a shotgun at times. There's a fairly wide variety of maps and some of them are quite cleverly designed to get you lost, but they never get too annoying. The slightly strange plot contains a particularly irritating set of twists and turns and by the end you can't remember what it was about (if you ever knew) but hey this is an FPS - it doesn't matter :-). The game this reminds me of the most is the first Red Faction game - though i'd say that was better if you enjoyed it it's worth playing this. Ultimately if you like an FPS game of this vintage it's diverting enough and as i knew the (very unsatisfactory) ending even that didn't disappoint me this time. I read somewhere there were different endings but it seems it's the same each time.
I really loved this game. i don't normally like third-person games but this is tremendous, and with perfectly acceptable graphics and movement and a film soundtrack that really makes it feel like an Indy film. It should be said this really is a third-person game - although you can if standing still hold down a key for first-person, this is only for looking around or aiming a weapon. Having to do so can make using guns a little tricky in this game, but that's my only real criticism. Other than that it's all good - you're taken to a variety of locations and each requires a good combination of acrobatics and combat to get you through. Thoroughly recommended, and i really hope they make more like this.
I played this game not long after it came out, and remembered well the adrenaline rush of hordes of oncoming enemies, different in every level of the game, along with the sometimes awe-inspiring, always interesting maps. The weapons are also fairly unique, not least the Painkiller itself, which with enough skill you can actually take out a lot of enemies without using any ammo. You’re given three difficulty levels to choose to start. An experienced PC FPS player should find the ‘Nightmare’ difficulty eminently doable whilst still presenting a good challenge. The game involves the use of tarot cards, some of which are operative throughout a level some of which you can only use for a short time. Collecting these cards is reliant upon completing levels according to various rules (eg killing every enemy) and to be honest i didn’t; really bother with it. Although you have to collect every tarot card to play the fourth and hardest 'Trauma' difficulty level The game does have some annoying bossfights but there are some very good walkthroughs available which allow you to get through these without working out what you need to go as you go. My only negative memory of the game first time round was painfully slow load-up times every time you started a level or opened a previous save – but on a modern PC these are on longer a problem. The game has plentiful checkpoints but just as importantly has a great quicksave function which allows you to save as many times as you like. My only criticism is that it’s a little unstable, crashing at various times and requiring a complete restart of my PC (even ctrl-alt-del couldn’t help). Also the cutscenes in the original Painkiller game kept crashing for some reason. Admittedly knowing the ‘plot’ as I did, I wasn’t bothered about that but it's still disappointing. The scenes were fine in Battle out of Hell though.
Just a warning for the unprepared - there is a checkpoint saving system in this game and you cannot save when you like I've only just started to play, but I'm already finding this to be annoying, both because it's a hard game so one particular bit might find you dying repeatedly and going through a large chunk again, but also you can't revert to an earlier save in situations when you realise you're under-equipped for the next stage. I've done some web-searching and this is a very common gripe with this game. For this reason alone i regard this game as a 'fail' - I've always hated checkpoint saving systems and for this there doesn't even seem to be a cheat available. It looks like it could be a very good game also, so that makes it doubly annoying. I didn't know before I bought it and I think GOG's descriptions could be a whole lot better on things like this. Sometimes I have to do a lot of research just to find out if a game is 1st person or 3rd person etc - i realise they're not alone in this, many sites aren't very good in making this info very clear. But this is such basic information that is intrinsic to whether or not you might want to play a game and it warns a sub-heading for any game description that has to be filled in. So in my view does a game's saving system. rant over...
I've just played this game again after many years, having downloaded from GOG. In terms of the game, i haven't tried MP but have played through the SP campaign again and for the most part really enjoyed it - i love fast-paced shooters and while it's fundamentally linear there are different approaches to be made to some of the maps. There's a decent variety of weapons and enemies and whilst some others have said the dialogue is repetitive (in which game is it not?!) i actually think the NPCs have more to say than in some more recent games. In some ways it reminds me of Far Cry 1 without the tropical island - even the 'helper' who talks to you on the comlink, and as with FC1 there's some amusing taunts - "Try and take ME, miner!" and my favourite "It's just you and me miner!" The blasting of holes in walls is also fun and innovative at the time Of course the graphics are dated but perfectly good enough, in fact i'm quite impressed with the characters' faces. There is one glitch i can find when the submarine you're supposed to use blows up but you can find a solution (not a cheat) by googling. But overall this is a great game and assuming you understand the concept of this site and really enjoy this...
