Painkiller

"Mindless shooting at its best."

The current gaming market is crowded with first person shooters promising 'stealth', 'strategy', and 'innovation'. Every now and then a game comes along that has the only purpose of the solid mindless shooting gameplay of classic first person shooters. Painkiller is the latest of such games, and has a few modern features that enhance the classic mindless shooter gameplay to provide an overall incredible first person shooter experience.

Story:

Story is definitely not the strong point of Painkiller. The story is set up only to give you a reason to kick hordes of demon ass, and it is apparent. The intro shows Daniel, the main character, driving his girlfriend Catherine one rainy day to a restaurant for her birthday when they get into an accident. They both die. She goes to heaven, Daniel stays in purgatory due to not being pure. To purify himself, he is told by a messenger from God, Sammuel, to defeat four generals of Satan's army. It does have its twists, but they're really quite miniscule. Overall, it's a fairly poor story. Story, however, is not the focus of Painkiller.

What Painkiller does get credit for is atmosphere, which is quite nice from the combination of incredible level design, music, and themes of purgatory. Many times you'll really feel like you're fighting in purgatory, and this makes for a very interesting game.

5/10

Gameplay:

The gameplay never strays from being anything more than all out action. General gameplay consists of going from point A to point B, and killing everything in between. You are forced to kill all enemies in this path, as between points doors will seal as each area is entered, and only when all enemies have been killed will the player be able to advance. It's a simple concept, yet it works-in most cases. Occasionally an enemy may be hard to reach, or the path hard to find. This happens only rarely, and overall the gameplay tends to be seamless action throughout the entire level.

The A.I. is poor, but yet again this is not a concern of Painkiller's. Painkiller never tries to throw out enemies that use clever tactics of any sort. Enemies simply rush out, surrounding the player from all sides. With weapons that never require reloading, a classic concept that has since been updated with 'realistic' reloading, you can keep your mind focused on one thing. Using your available weapons to clear out all enemies.

Five weapons are available in Painkiller. At first thought, that seems to be a low number. However, each weapon has an alternate fire mode. The painkiller is the melee weapon, its alternate fire is a beam that is shot out and can be used in multiple ways. The shotgun has an alternate fire of freezing enemies, the rocket launcher has the alternate fire of a minigun, as well as a few others. Not only that, but all methods of clearing out enemies are covered by the weapon selection in Painkiller. You will never be left wanting more ways to kill.

9/10

Graphics:

Textures are not top quality of the current standard. There is little bump-mapping to be seen in Painkiller, as the game was designed with a high frame-per-second count in mind as opposed to spectacular graphics. Painkiller does get by on some very nice detail textures, which manage to keep the game looking clean and crisp at all times.

Physics have a large role in Painkiller. Enemies will often explode into many body parts, which will be thrown about the environment. Not only the ragdolls, but also many parts of the environments themselves are tossed around in the carnage. These aren't small items alone; in Painkiller you will often come across huge piles of rock, wooden platforms, and huge stone pillars that will all crumble from the explosions and gunfire put on them. These huge objects breaking and falling using real time physics is something that truly must be seen.

Character models are smooth and detailed. The enemies are an assortment of 'weird' creatures, from skeletons to ninjas to zombies that throw dead chickens as a weapon. The enemies are in many cases not even relevant to the levels they are in, but are always quite interesting in design. Most importantly, they are fun to blast.

Architecture is crisp and vibrant. Often, you will be able to look out at the level and see places that you were at some time ago. Sight distance is quite far, and perfectly compliments the detailed architecture. Between levels are little to no similarities in design. In one level you may be fighting in a cathedral, another a snowy bridge, and in another fighting in a military base. This constant changing of themes keeps the levels interesting. The final level of the game is quite awesome. While the game doesn't have much meaning to it, that is made up for with the final level. This you will need to see for yourself.

8/10

Sound/Music:

Sounds of Painkiller are quite average. From the blasting of the shotgun to the sound of enemies getting blown to pieces, the sound manages to sound 'good enough', but not much more. Sounds can get quite repetitive, and hearing the aforementioned shotgun blast over and over with no variation of sound can actually start to give a headache.

Music, similarly, gets the job done, but is still quite average. It's the standard rock soundtrack that many games use just to create an intense feeling. That in particular it does well, and music plays according to the action onscreen. No enemies around? Simple music for the purpose of ambience(and that ambience is created nicely) plays. Enemies charging at you? Fast paced music will play.

7/10

Replayability:

Painkiller provides plenty of content that will satisfy your desire from it. The main game consists of 24 levels and four difficulties. Two of these levels are locked on an initial play through. One of which is opened by playing nightmare of the difficulties daydream, insomniac, nightmare, and trauma. The second is opened by playing trauma, but to open trauma you must collect all of the tarot cards from previous levels. Tarot cards are power ups that can be used during a level so long as you have the card, and unlocking the card is possible through achieving a particular goal. Needless to say, because of all this the game lasts quite some time.

8/10

Painkiller is all about great old school shooter action. It's got some great new features such as physics, and is a solid game. For anyone seeking a first person shooter that attempts and achieves nothing more than being mindless shooting, this is the one.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/01/04