Painkiller (2004)

Painkiller is just Epic. In the core it is just a First-Person Shooter in which you shoot monsters and progress to the next stage, classic stuff that Doom, Serious Sam and Duke Nukem did before, but this game feels different somehow. It has a unique style of playing and some mechanics that are different in a way that it offers a fresh new concept.

You play as Daniel Garner, a happily married dude who dies, along with his wife Catherine, in a car crash. Catherine goes to heaven and lives happily ever after, but not you. You are sent to Purgatory and are trapped there. Then, an Angel called Samuel makes a deal with you. If you can wipe out the four generals of Lucifers army, to prevent a battle between Heaven and Hell, you will be purified and can join your wife in Heaven. You accept and go off to war. On your journey, you meet a chick named Eve, who is also trapped in Purgatory. She aids you with information on the whereabouts of the next generals and other useful tips.

The graphics in Painkiller are great. The environments are beautiful and detailed, and every level has some sort of Gothic theme that enhances the graphics even more. I especially liked the “Town” level and the “Opera” stage. The animations are perfect too. Enemies have Ragdoll and you can blow them away with your shotgun or nail them to the wall with your stake gun. Explosions and fire effects are really well done too. There are some clipping issues tough, but I take that for granted. Every level is completely unique with different themes, environments and enemies, keeping the game fresh.

The controls are fluent, as can be expected from a fast-paced shooter like this. They feel natural and responsive. The Weapons are awesome. You got some sort of blade spinner as a melee weapon, shotguns, rocket launchers, machine guns and, best of all, your stake gun which lets you fire wooden sticks at enemies, nailing them to every surface. It is just epic.

Some unique mechanics in this game is the soul collecting when killing enemies, which increases your health by one for each soul collected and let you enter demon rage mode, killing everything you point at. You can also earn Tarot cards that give you a bonus in each level if you selected that specific card for the level. You first earn those cards by completing a challenge in a level, for example, kill fifty monsters with explosions, or kill all enemies on the stage. When you earned the card, you need to buy it so you can use it. This can be done with gold, which you can collect and scavenge throughout the levels. I really liked this mechanic, and it gave some kind of RPG feel.

Painkiller offers excellent and well-balanced multiplayer, only matched by Serious Sam. It is fast paced, fair and gives everyone a fair chance. I really liked it back in the day, even tough it is now mostly abandoned.

What sets this game apart for me is the sound and music. I think I can say, without a doubt, that this game has the best music that I have experienced so far, even better than Serious Sam. Every level has a unique Heavy Metal fight track that really gets you pumped up. Combine this with the excellent sound effects of your weapons and the enemy grunts and it makes for one epic experience. It is just a masterpiece.

The ending of the game is true badass style, Daniel knows that the killing is not done yet and is eager to return to the fighting, even tough he is offered to go to heaven like promised.

In the end, Painkiller is a masterpiece in every way and one of the games that I can play any time of the year. It is a real classic and that it why it has multiple sequels and a remake, rightfully so.

You really need to play Painkiller at least once in your lifetime, in my humble opinion.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what I was expecting out of this game, it is so simple in it's design that you hardly expect anyone to really only rely on their core aspects for a full feature game, especially during this time, maybe in the era of Super Nintendo where games like Smash TV would exist, a game like this would be a warmer welcome as a classic. But no, what you see is what you get, no complex map designs or anything of the sort, it really is just enter a room and clear a wave of enemies.

But yeah I've heard in some places this is considered one of the classics, or at least one of the lesser known classics, less popular than Serious Sam but part of the FPS games I've "heard of", but I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from it really. Smash TV but a first person shooter wasn't exactly what I was expecting for sure, I thought Painkiller all this time was just a regular Retro styled FPS game with a fully fledged campaign and not just what is usually included as a bonus campaign like a SURVIVAL WAVE mode.

Least to say I guess the most common complaint a game like this could get is that it is reppetive, the fact that it only has you with a limited selection of guns throughout the entire game doesn't help. You are pretty much going out throughout the game killing Halloween costumes which go for sale, that is the only prevelant theme in the whole game, it is completely random outside of that, enemies, models and setting change drastically each chapter essentially, and while the set and theming might seem cool (literally one of the few places this game has any variation in), the map design isn't.

Due to to a lot of the locations being these enclosed spaces that you gotta defeat a certain number of enemies until you progress, it feels as if for the most part the game feels cramped and never allows you to fully live up to that Arena like experience of a truly open area where you can kill the enemies. And whenever I ask for a different type of map, a monkey paw fingers curls and it gives me something different... But somehow still bad. Like it feels really cramped at times and then when it opens itself up it feels too empty and I'm like: ok go back whatever. It doesn't help that any random misclick you might make will result in a barrel or box exploding, as it seems that even though the game motivates you to destroy crates and the such, a lot of them generally explode and can kill you instantly, in fact the enemies were NEVER ever hard in this game because you are always a few bhops away from them, what is truly a challenge is the isntant kill exploding crates that might catch you off guard because you are shooting things.

And you won't believe it... This game has fall damage, and also commits other sins: Boss fights that are essentially just bullet sponges and also unfair at times, at first I thought they weren't receiving damage and I had to do something different, yes they were bleeding but it still wasn't that much of a good an indication- Anyways I was right, it was some stupid puzzle, what a warm welcome to a game that is essentially just mindlessly shooting enemies in a reppetive fashion, but when the boss isn't a stupid puzzle, it's just stupid. None of the bosses in this game are fun.

The walking speed, especially for this type of game, is not ideal, and the game basically early on forces you to rely on bunny hopping of some sort to gain speed, this takes a little momentum and isn't the most reliable when you have to pick up speed immediately, not only that but it basically makes it so that the entire game you are mashing the space bar repeatedly just for the sake of simple movement, because sometimes speed is crucial to even survive certain bullshit situations this game pulls off.

Also for a game this simple, it out of nowhere will throw something that you'll get stuck with, like somehow no matter how cramped or little or straight to the point it might seem, map design finds a way to be obtuse and not straight to the point, the idea that you have to defeat all enemies to progress also means that you could have accidentally missed one all the way in the back and they are stuck there.

You might even get some fun out of it but sooner or later you realize that the game is nothing more than the structure it has presented you a thousand times of entering somewhere, killing enemies, exit the place, repeat. I'm assuming for it's time in the PS2 era this was all well and dandy and you could even satisfy a customer with this type of stuff if this was the only game you had to play, but for the most part it will require you forcing yourself to go through the rest of the campaign.

The popular consesus on this game from FPS fans seems to be: It's really boring, but it has some cool model and map artistic designs. If I were to tweak anything to make it less of a drag, I'd make picking up souls a lot easier so that you get the little special power up you get from collecting a certain number of souls, the idea that you have to wait like 3 seconds until the body turns into a soul and then retract back to pick it up is a pain that this game should be killing.

A larger weapon variety would also have been better for a game like this, or better yet a variety of weapons that do more area of damage considering the large horde of enemies, most of the guns you have only pick one enemy at a time and you'll end up relying too heavily on the shotgun (the VERY FIRST WEAPON) because every now and then it'll do a greater area of effect.

The card system also could be greatly expanded or at least less ignorable, the whole idea that you can only unlock some if you follow a secret challenge that most will only know what the challenge is by the end of the game is also not fun, it doesn't help that the cards are one of the few things in this game to change the monotomy but they don't REALLY do much, they just activate something for a few minutes.

Like all I'm getting from Painkiller is something Serious Sam would give me a thousand times better, faster and in a way that doesn't become as tedious. For when it came out the physics, the fact that sometimes bodies can explode into little pieces and bodies flying away was probably enough to entertain people back in 2004, the metal soundtrack probably makes someone numb enough to want to play more and see if they get more interesting map scenary this gme is known for, but god... Does it suck sometimes. Maybe if I played it with someone else and we would take turns with levels it would be a more fun experience.

The story is just bad, it has some funny graphics for it's time but it really doesn't even need to be there. You can skip the story, in fact if the campaign isn't good enough for you, and it seems it isn't for most, you can try the expansion Battle Out of Hell which condenses a little more what the core game is known for and most consider to be a way better experience in every single way, plus, right away you get to kill children in it. The expansion doesn't fix all of the issues but at least it gets to the point more than the core game does. Either way, the whole experience reeks of: Style over substance.

I was gonna give this game 3/5 because it is playable, it does seem to have at least some effort to it, but the fact that I can't even drag myself to play all of it while I have fully completed other 3/5 games, 3/5 games that try a LOT more than just being a mindless game where you shoot enemies over and over but didn't jive with me well because of a few flaws, (usually 3/5 is reserved for games with good intentions but are too pretentious) well that in itself deserves a 2/5. Yeah, mostly didn't like it.

I cannot believe how many of these games there are. (I started out playing Painkiller Black, my only PK as of this time) First act was boring to the point of considering giving it up, but it picks up nicely.

The maps are thematically cool and the audio is really good for its day. The game also has some really cool boss fight ideas (for an FPS) and actually even has minibosses on occasion.

If you like an FPS that has weird style, weapons, and bosses that require tricks to defeat in different ways this is worth a look at. If you are looking old FPS games for a story or some unique element, this isn't it, not even close.

This has some eye rolling bad video cutscenes too that are made barely tolerable due to the insensible writing and made-up lip synching. The gameplay gets old after a while but the game isnt that long.

At the end of the day this feels about what you'd expect from a 15 year old shooter. It's a generic experience overall but it does have it's own brand of style at least.

I want to know what Lucifer's plans were for that USSR emblazoned Anti gravity... umm 'non-winged aircraft' you use to warp to a boss at the nuclear icbm air force base. Fun idea!