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Like Duck Hunt.... With zombies!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have a system that actually falls BELOW minimum system requirements (a 32 meg nVidia card, rather than 64, everything else is above the minimum requirements). This means that the menus don't load right, nor can I view any cut-scenes. Yet, I LOVE THIS GAME!! The in-game play looks gorgeous, even on my machine (if you meet the min specs, buy the game). The architectural textures are at times simple, but stunningly used. Lighting, rag doll physics, weather effects, and character details are simply supurb. I rarely wanted to turn down any details, even if the framerate slowed a bit in large open areas with scores of enemy attackers.

Those looking for a tight plot... well, I can't really tell you what the plot is (like I said, my system won't play the cut scenes). But it doesn't matter. If it moves - mutilate it and harvest its soul. That's all I need to know.

Enemy AI? Who cares? How intelligent do limping zombies ripping off their flesh and throwing it at you have to be? And what about the guys that drag themselves around on the ground by their hands, only to stumble to their feet long enough to begin munching on your neck? You expect them to duck for cover or call in backup? No? Good, then you won't be dissappointed.

So, without knowing the plot, and without smart enemies, why would I recommend this game? The pure rush of being locked in a graveyard (or cathedral, or village square, etc.) with zombies, gouls, witches, ninjas, skeletons, and more (oh my!). Imagine dozens (and I mean DOZENS) of enemies limping, crawling, wailing, moaning, and putrifying all around you at every moment, constantly drawing slowly towards you as you start running low on wooden stakes.

Extra challenges, such as finishing a level with only your stake-gun, or harvesting at least 100 souls, unlocks bonus powerups that you can use in subsequent levels.

The save-game bugs some have mentioned have been fixed with a second patch (download it at dreamcatcher.com). While I usually hate games with save points, this game gives you the additional option of quicksaves (which I rarely have had the need to use). The save points are REALLY well placed, leading to a nice game-flow without the worry of having to re-play a long sequence over and over.

Can't wait until I upgrade my vid card and find out why the H-E-double-hockey-sticks I had to dismember so many freaks of nature.

Mindless, Brainless and Wonderful Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This games is simply fun. It's not dumb but it veers away from the recent trend in first person shooters by eschewing complex controls, stealth and in game objectives and instead has one simple premise....if it moves, shoot it.

That sounds simplistic but the game handles the premise so very well that instead it basically distills everything down to pure fun.

The storyline is simple but effective: You are Daniel Garner, who died in a car accident while taking his girlfriend out for her birthday. Trapped in a place between Heaven and Hell, you struggle to uncover the reasons why you are denied entry into Heaven, the only place where you will see your loved one again. Sent on a mission to assassinate four of Satan's men, you become Heaven's hitman. I can do that.

What unfolds is rather majestic in its scope and execution. The game just looks fabulous and with the Havok engine, the environment opponents' bodies fly back, twisting and turning as you shoot them, realistically smashing into doors and other objects. There were times when I had finished off the enemies in some areas when I would just walk around shooting things to watch the effects, it's that impressive. And when you're blasting enemies, there'll be times when you just stop to watch your assailant soar through the air before continuing to the next one. The weapon sounds sound great so you can almost feel the impact of your weapons.

What really impressed me was the level design. We've all seen the endless corridors and rather staid levels in many FPS games but Painkiller takes level design to a new level, no pun intended. There's such a bizarre variety of levels, from Insane Asylums to an Opera House to an Abandoned Military Base to an Old Refinery to. you get the idea. It's creative and feels right in this game.

And speaking of levels, the end game level in Hell has to be seen to be believed. The designer put together a level that in my humble opinion would be worthy of a cinematic treatment. It's a great interpretation of what hell could be, based on the way humans have lived much of their lives.

So, get this one and as long as you aren't in need of the realistic tactical shooter type game, you'll have a blast. I know I did.

Don't listen to the cheapskates below....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I ventured and bought the game...and I love it.

Sure there aren't really any puzzles...but that doesn't make it bad. This game is good for what it's supposed to be, a mindless click-happy FPS. Think Serious Sam meets Duke Nukem.

The graphics are great...I can't run everything on high due to my 1.8ghz, AIW Radeon 8500, 1.024GB RAM configuration, but the engine chugs along pretty well for the most part. There were some slowdowns during a few scenes.

If you want a game with NON-STOP action, choose Painkiller and prepare to get some finger cramps from clicking so much! Monsters come at you from ALL directions and there are some very cool special effects.

Fun game, great graphics, cool weapons, nice physics....What more could you want?

Prety good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

There's something that really excites me about senseless violence in videogames. Whether it's a sign of built up aggression in need of venting is debatable, but the fact remains that when a good run-and-gun shooter comes along you know you're in for a fun ride - provided you can stand the mindless violence, blood, and flying body parts. The storyline in Painkiller begins with a married couple dying in a traffic accident. Your wife is sent immediately to heaven, but you unfortunately stop in what's said to be between heaven and hell, a place where your actions decide whether you go up or down. The man himself knows of your skills in the arts of kicking butt, and through a messenger you're given the opportunity to be reunited with your wife. The catch is that you're going to have to kill four of Lucifer's generals. You see, Lucifer is well aware of the strategic importance the area between heaven and hell has, and he's preparing to attack. Armed with the painkiller weapon and fueled by the desire to see your wife you start the hunt. Throughout the story you meet a couple of allies, who in cut-scenes help you plan your next moves. The hordes of hell come in many shapes and forms, so you'll be fighting nasty grey monks armed with axes, spiky dog-like creatures, samurai, drunken fat people, and a whole lot more. The game consists of about four chapters, each with up to six levels. The chapters tend to have a certain theme, such as contemporary buildings, swamps, old stony buildings, and so on. It's interesting to note that no level specific textures are used in more than one level. The textures themselves are also for the most part very crisp and clear, with only a few exceptions. The level design itself is pretty decent too, although maybe not so much so at first. As you play the game you typically have to kill a number of enemies in one area of a level, a red waypoint is then placed somewhere. When you move over that waypoint the game auto-saves and your health is usually set to 100 if it's less than that, and then new monsters start attacking. I think this is neatly done, because this way you won't be facing areas of the map where it's impossible to get past without restarting the map and being more conservative with the health. Painkiller doesn't have a whole lot of weapons, but the ones that are there work very well. Every weapon has a main and an alternative firing mode, which is cool in itself, but you can often combine them for added mayhem. Painkiller is the name of your first weapon, where the main firing mode is a spinning blade that does extremely good damage in close-quarters. The secondary fire fires the top forward, which in itself can be useful, but you can also let it stick to a wall, creating a fairly damaging laser beam. And finally, by first using the main mode to make it spin, and then fire it forward it'll continue spinning as it travels forward. Beyond the painkiller you have a stake launcher, which works in some ways like a slow rail-gun, but it also has a tendency to fix your enemy to the wall, or ceiling (think spear-gun in Aliens vs Predator). Its secondary mode fires grenades, which is of course required in a game like. Next up is the shotgun, which is extremely efficient against certain larger monsters if you first use the secondary mode, which freezes the enemy, and then blast it to bits with the regular buckshot. Another more innovative weapon is one that shoots what appear to be ninja stars in the primary mode, and electrifies the enemy with the secondary. It's really fun to see how both firing modes in each of the weapons can be great against certain adversaries, and pretty bad against other. You will need to change weapons a lot in Painkiller, but that just adds to the fun in my opinion. But of course, the opposition you face in the levels culminates in the boss-fights. Like in Serious Sam, a game Painkiller is quite similar to, the bosses are no less than huge. The first encounters in particular are especially fun, because you start by seeing something huge coming at you in the distance, and you soon realize that what you're facing is many, many times taller than you. To defeat these you usually can't just shoot like a madman. Some bosses require you to shoot them at a specific spot, while others are resistant to all weapons except maybe just one. Also, the use of the Havok 2 physics engine brings the game to life. Every enemy has ragdoll properties, many of the game's objects can be moved, and the environment is to some extent dynamic. This plays an important part during the boss fights too, because some may for instance tear down a wall and throw huge rocks at you. Painkiller is certainly not the first game to use the Havok 2 engine, but it uses it so well that I can't begin to imagine how the game would've been without it. The audio is also nothing to scoff at. The musical score consists of what to me sounds like only one or possibly two heavy metal songs. They get you in the mood and all, and sound good at high volumes, but only about the first ten times you hear them. There are admittedly a few other pieces of background music, which fits fairly well with the theme the developers were trying to create in the level, but heavy metal is what you'll hear the most of. The sound effects are also quite well done, but I do wish some of the explosions for instance had more bass. Most of the voice overs are used during the game's somewhat long, but interesting cut-scenes. They're done well for the most part, leaving not a whole lot to be wanted. And as expected, all of this is encoded to support 5.1 (and even 6.1) surround - which never hurts. The guys behind Painkiller have said their main inspiration comes from games like Quake1 (Quakeworld in particular), Quake 3, and probably a few more. This is quite evident when playing the single player mode, but also in the multiplayer. Painkiller has the typical deathmatch modes you'd expect, but also a couple of new ones, such as one where you're only vulnerable when you're in the air, meaning you have to blow someone up, and then shoot them. Unfortunately no bots are included, so you'll be hard pressed to practice against only the computer in multiplayer. A decent number of maps are also included; both for 1 on 1, larger deathmatches, and of course for the more specialized modes. The netcode also seems to be good, so there shouldn't be much of a reason not to give it a try.

Most fun I've had with an FPS in a long long time!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It's a pity Painkiller didn't fare better in sales. It got widespread critical acclaim and rightly so.

The graphics are superb and the gameplay is fast and furious. The crazy minions of Hell that you have to fend off are wildly imaginative and deadly. My personal favourites are the amputee and the ninja swordmen. There are also some stellar levels... with the asylum map being particularly spooky. As for the level bosses, in a word, huge!

The weapons are pretty much standard fps fare, but the one original weapon, the stakegun, is a hoot. My personal favourite in the arsenal. Combine the stakegun with the superb ragdoll physics and you got some intense action.

Okay there are a few things I didn't like. The puzzles you have to solve in order to beat the level bosses. The load times were a touch long. Some of the later levels (docks and old monastery) were a let down when compared with the earlier ones.

But these are minor criticisms. Seriously, this was the most fun I've had with a shooter in awhile. You can find Painkiller now in the bargain bin so there is absolutely no excuse not to get this gem of a shooter.

well executed mindless mayhem

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Painkiller isn't a particularly sophisticated game. However, it does one thing very well: mindless mayhem in realistic and gorgeous settings. It's got a nice variety of monsters and settings that keep the mayhem from getting repetitive. The weapons have a range of effects that give them all their appropriate place. All in all, it's a blast to play.

The only complaint I have about this game is that it is very picky about hardware. The minimum machine requirements are accurate and the game is able to bring even a new machine to its knees on some levels. It's also a bit picky about CD-ROM drives (due to the on-disk copy protection) and can have trouble with even officially supported video cards. Older RADEON cards, in particular, are an issue. See the forums at dreamcatchergames.com for details. Be sure to patch the game before playing it (the patch fixed nearly all of my RADEON video problems).

Really impressive demo

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I tried the recently released 3 level demo of this game and i have to say that it's really impressive. First off, the graphics are simply amazing, this is truly a next gen game. Everything is highly detailed, from the monsters to the gorgeous architecture. This is a very atmospheric game, you actually fell like you're on the places of the game. The particles effect of blood when you kill a monster at a close range are very beliaveble. The physics are out of this world, you have to see to beliave. It's very fun to hit the enemies with the stake gun and see the diferent ways they react to it , like flying away, doing spins on the air, beeing pinned to the ground or wall, very cool. You can interact with almost everything in this game; you push broken parts of the scenario, destroy windows, coffins, and things like that. And now the gameplay, ohhh, fantastic. The gameplay is very smooth and pure action, and the amazing physisc only help it. One thing that adds a lot to the gameplay is that the weapons are so original, especially the stake gun. This game is so fun that i played the 3 levels available on the demo several times. If the demo play this well, i can't wait for the final product. It's a real contender for Halo 2, Doom 3 and Half-Life II.

Operator error

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is more of a reply to "vsokko" who gave Painkiller only one star because it wouldn't run on his system. More and more new games (like Painkiller and FarCry) will not run if you have CD/DVD emulation software (i.e. Nero, Norton Ghost, etc.) installed on the same disk partition as the game. Simply disabling this software is not enough; it has to be completely uninstalled. This is not a bug in the game; rather it's the publishers trying to prevent unauthorized copying. Painkiller is a good game of the Serious Sam type with incredible graphics and a lot of imagination. But, if you have the subject software and don't want to uninstall it (or put it on another partition), don't waste your money and blame the game. Finally, keep in mind that Painkiller seems to be optimized for nVidia cards. ATI cards (like my 9800 XT) work fine for some people but have serious "issues" for other players -- especially in the game's "catacombs" level. I've checked a couple of video card/driver forums to confirm this. Hopefully, Dreamcatcher will issue a patch or ATI will fix their drivers, but, for now, beware.

Feels like an old amature Doom map...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 22
Date: February 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Beautiful engine? Yes. Real-time physics? Yes. The first time I shot an enemy and he stuck to a wall hunched over I had to run and tell my wife I was so excited... she didn't see the excitement. Really, it's awesome to see. The steak went strait through him and into the wall and he sat there dangling like a rag doll.

Does this game display some of the new graphics advancements we've been hearing about for the last couple years? Yes it does. It displays them in bright vivid detail like I've never seen before. Unfortunately this game feels more like one of those old amateur Doom maps where someone put 10,000 monsters in a single room just so you could put a cheat on and blast them all away with a BFG . There is a constant and full barrage of monsters ALLLLLL the time. The level design is breath-taking, but because you're constantly running (backwards) away from monsters that are relentless in their pursuit of you, you never get a chance to look around and take in the eye candy. Which brings me to the monsters. While I was playing (more like running for minutes on end backwards away from monsters) I felt myself longing for a little more intelligence in the enemies. They always follow directly behind you; they're not smart enough to realize they can cut you off if you're running in a circle. It reminded me of a cat chasing a mouse at the end of a string as you go in circles around the kitchen table. The cat never realizes that if it sits still, the mouse will come around again and it can catch it. Considering the fact that all you seem to do the whole game is run around in circles away from enemies you'd think they'd include a little "cut-off = yes if player_a = running_in_circles, end if" in their A.I.

The game sends a constant deluge of enemies, both big and small, and I felt as though my hands were tied behind my back because the weaponry I was given was not apt for the situation. I mean, come on, 50 screaming stupid monsters running after me, at least give me a machine gun with a ton of ammo. What am I doing? Shooting small logs out of a gun. But I won't get into the weapons, since they probably didn't include them all in the demo.

There aren't any puzzles to figure out. Just ballzout start-to-finish action. If your idea of a fun game is running from 50 enemies at once and you enjoy a total lack of strategy, this is probably your game.
My verdict? Leave your brain at the start menu because you won't need it to play this game.

It's no Serious Sam, but it'll keep you occupied

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Painkiller's graphics are fantastic, its weapons unique and often thrilling to use, and its bodycounts so high you'll laugh. The sounds are also used effectively with energetic and simple metal tracks to accompany battles and slow but creepy tracks to fill the (brief) spaces between them. However, it lacks the some of the charm of the games it tries to imitate. Your character is somewhat slow moving and the action isn't really that fast. The levels aren't interactive beyond blowing up crates. Even so, it's a great game, and will be enough to keep us at bay until Serious Sam II and Doom III arrive.

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