First things first, blood-monkeys: Painkiller is a great game. It might not redefine the state of gaming, but one would have a difficult time disputing the simple fact that it is one of the most fun (if not addictive) pure-bred shooters to come out in a long time.
Let's structure the intro to this review like a movie trailer (dream with me, kids):
In a world...
filled with on-line, multiplayer games
Only One Man
Can Kill More NPC's
Than ever thought humanly possible
...
...
YOU are The Painkiller
Well, that's not quite accurate you're not actually the painkiller... the painkiller is your weapon of choice. But let's move on.
Painkiller puts you squarely into the boots of Daniel something-er-other (I forgot his last name because I was too busy KILLING), a good man, a decent man, a dead man. Yep, as soon as you start a new game, you're treated to a mediocre cinema sequence in which Danny boy is taking his girlfriend out for her birthday. Guess what? They get killed in a car accident on the way there. Sad stuff, eh?
Anyway, when we next meet our "hero", he's in the afterlife, in a purgatorial position somewhere between heaven and hell. Because everyone needs a hobby (and because God has a sense of humor) Danny now works as a hitman for the ultimate G-Man. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is floating on a cloud or something up in heaven, where Danny is promised to be allowed to enter provided that he wack a few of Satan's more troublesome generals. It seems that our old friend Lucifer is planning a war on heaven and is using purgatory as a staging area, meaning that you (as Danny) are about to have a very busy schedule of contract killings for the big guy upstairs.
You're given this mission by a particularly snotty and obtuse angel whose name is easily forgettable. Danny whines a lot, saying that he doesn't deserve this fate and that he should have been allowed into heaven in the first place. The response from the Head Office is an intractable resolution: Danny must complete the hits before he will be allowed to enter heaven and reunite with his chick. There. That's the story.
Now forget everything I just told you because it has absolutely nothing to do with the game. Painkiller is one of the most linear, story-less shooters I've seen in years, and guess what? I've discovered that I missed games like this, where the emphasis is placed squarely on the gameplay... and the killing. You accept your missions through a mission screen and must complete them in a set order (levels that you've beaten are repeatable in any order you desire). The levels themselves are made up of check-pointed rooms. Kill everything that moves in room A and you are allowed to advance to room B. If this sounds dull to you, it should. However, the game has one great and redeeming quality which makes the previous statements irrelevant: there is killing. A Lot Of Killing. And the Killing Is Fun.
The Killing:
Painkiller can be summed up very simply: Imagine if you crossed Serious Sam with a new version of Hexxen (in true 3D) and then made the graphics better, dropped in a seriously psychotic physics engine, and set the whole thing in creepy, atmospheric levels in the afterlife, and you'd pretty much have Painkiller. But you still wouldn't have a clear concept of the gameplay. Why? Because the weapons in Painkiller are awesome, recalling the days when FPS' had guns that had actually personality... characteristics and traits that made us love them even as we exploded in the face of impossible foes.
What the fuck am I talking about? I'm talking about the Painkiller and The Stake Gun. Let's look at the stake gun first. It's a gun that fires large, sharpened rods into your enemies and (depending on where they are hit, how strong they are, the arc and trajectory of the stake, and their physical mass) pins them to stuff. Like walls. And ceilings. Firing the stake gun is so damn satisfying that it's silly the physics engine really shines here.
For instance, when you shoot an average-sized baddie in the shoulder with the stake gun, a few different things can happen. Depending on the conditions mentioned in the previous paragraph, any one of the following may occur:
- The stake will transfer its inertia into your enemy, and, in doing so, will cause the fucker to be flipped over in an elliptical arc, spinning through the air any number of times depending on the enemy's size.
- From there, the stake can actually pin the guy to the floor, to a nearby wall, or to nothing at all (after flying and rolling through the air, the corpse will simply come to rest).
- Very often, the directional force of the stake will simply nail-gun the fucker to whatever was behind them. This is just as fun to see as a guy flipping over. The stakes, by the way, remain visible for a good long while (see the screens).
- If your enemy wasn't very strong, they may simply explode into super-graphic displays of gibbage.
The stake gun is a very satisfying weapon. It has a slow automatic reloading mechanism that makes it just fast enough to fight off the endless hordes of enemies who often gang up on you in the game. Should things just get too hectic (and you run out of room to backpeddle) the stake gun also features a secondary grenade launcher which does unspeakably awful things to bad guys when they come at you in a group. Blood sprays everywhere. Arms and limbs and heads and torsos are thrown into the air. It is wonderful.
Speaking of things running at you, the enemies in Painkiller are psychotic, lacking in intelligence, and come at you in en-masse. From dark monks wielding axes, to skeleton knights, to refuse-flinging zombies, when you fight something in the game, you fight a lot of it. At times like this, it's best to have either the Painkiller or your shotgun out (the shotgun, by the way, holds 100 shells and never needs to be reloaded).
Unfortunately, screenshots do not do justice to the awesome power of the painkiller as it is capable of inflicting unbelievable damage on anything that opposes you very, very quickly. Its primary fire mode (which I use rarely) is called "Pain". "Pain" makes the blades of the painkiller extend out and rotate at about 45 mph. Driving "Pain" into 50 demons results in a crunching sound so delicious that you almost do not notice all the blood spraying everywhere.
While "Pain" is cool, the weapon's secondary fire mode is even cooler. "Killer" launches the unopened blades into the chests of your enemies, returning instantly after hitting them. This kills weak enemies in one hit, launching their bodies into the air where, if they are hit again (while firing at enemies behind them) they bounce obscenely until coming to rest on the floor. I use "Killer" a lot we are good friends. Oh, sometimes it makes bad guys explode.
There are several other weapons (a rocket launcher/gattling gun combo weapon and a shuriken launcher among them), but these three make up the bulk of my joy when playing the game.
But wait... there's more...
One of my favorite things about the game are the 4 boss encounters, the first in particular. His name is "Necro-something" and is as tall as a building. Yep. I'm not kidding. Painkiller has the biggest bosses I've ever seen in a computer game. They are enormous, hard to beat, and fun to kill. They must be seen to believed.
Game Length and Replay Value
Painkiller clocks in at around 14-16 hours on the medium difficulty level, not bad for a shooter this intense. There is significant possibility for replay value in the sense that there are "Black Tarot" cards hidden in each level, and unlockable goals like "Collect 500 Gold" for each stage. The Tarot cards are pretty important they make your life much easier on the harder difficulty levels. Finding every secret area could also turn the game into a 40-60 hour fragfest. I'm not sure how well the game will hold up after several months, but all I can tell you is that I beat the game last night, played it for 2 hours today on the next harder difficulty level (certain levels are unavailable depending on the difficulty level), and really want to finish this review so I can go kill more.
The Bottom Line:
I recommend Painkiller to anyone who likes to kill a lot of things, do it in a graphically-rich environment, and enjoys the notion of nailing enemies to walls. It's a great shooter, and it warms my heart to see a game like this reaching wide-spread distribution during these, our dark days of the online multiplayer shooters. Pick it up and revel in the highly-scripted, completely linear slaughter I think you'll find it quite satisfying. If not, then kill. Everything.
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