• Windows 2000
• Windows 98
• Windows Me
• Windows XP

When it comes to first-person shooters, there are two schools of thought. One harkens back to the original Doom--frantic action, scary monsters, big weapons, and story is given short shrift. The second school is best exemplified by Half-Life: strong narrative, consistent real-world weapons, consistent monsters, and settings. Doom's heirs up until now have been Quake and Serious Sam, but now Painkiller comes onto the scene leaving bloody footprints, and … let the carnage begin!

You play a man who dies in a pathetic car crash (he's distracted because he's holding his girl's hand) and has spent a long time in purgatory. He thinks this is unfair because, despite being well-schooled in the art of killing, he maintains that he's done nothing wrong. Heaven makes a deal with him. Take care of a little invasion problem concerning Hell, and our hero can enter those pearly gates.

Weak storyline aside, Painkiller basically amounts to a brilliant series of arcade-style levels and challenges. The settings include darkened monasteries, graveyards, a horrifying asylum, a medieval town under siege, and even H-E-Double Hockey Sticks itself. The level design is brilliant, varied, and jam-packed with enemies. There seems to be no end to the amount and variety of cool monsters to fight, and they each explode into chunks of blood and gore in a most disturbingly satisfying manner. At the end of each level is a challenge, such as collecting a certain amount of gold or killing a Boss within a time limit. Winning the challenge gives you tarot cards you can use to make the game easier. The different cards bring haste, double-damage, invulnerability, and so on. This simple mechanic makes the game far more replayable than your average shooter.

The graphics are first rate, which means you need a powerful PC to run the game with all the detail settings maxed out. The only other problem is a CD-copy protection bug that makes the game unplayable for some (a patch is available).

Painkiller may seem a bit silly at first glance. But the gameplay mechanics, replayability (full multiplayer is also available), variety, and brilliant level design make it one of the finest and most satisfying shooters ever made. -Andrew S. Bub

Pros:

• Superb gameplay and game balance
• Excellent level design
• Strong replayability

• Poor, unnecessary storyline
• High system requirements
• Problematic copy protection

Great Idea, Bad Follow Through

The graphics and scenery are quite dazzling and spectacular. The music is decent. There are lots of good sound effects and ambient music/sound. The heavy metal segments that play during combat are decent but get a little repetitive after a while, and also are a little too predictable since you know what's coming as soon as you hear it. Some here claim that it's only one or two metal riffs that they play through but that's not the case. There is a metal riff for each level (I know I inspected the contents of the sound.pak file in the game). The maps are a little uninspired at times, but also provide that closed in, no idea where the bad guys are coming from feeling other times.

The story line starts out great but gets a little shallow and nearly imperceptible as you move though the game. The biggest negative of the game is the instability. I had nothing but bugs from beginning to end (unhandled exceptions that won't give you an error, just boom.. gone). Replay value is non existent as the path through the game is linear with no variance.

Fun to see and go through but gets a little tedious at times and the bugs are a huge annoyance.

love it!

this game rox my sox! the graphics are awsome, the guns are more then I could have asked for, and the plot is spectacular. when I played this at my cousins, he couldn't get me off of it!

should have worked better

This game had a lot of potential. It had an interesting premise, cool weapons, lots of bad guys, cool landscapes, etc.....

But the game just didn't seem to work despite all the parts. The action was done in sequences, where invariably music will start and enemies will attack you. The levels don't have a lot to them, mainly involving killing enemies then moving to the next level. the plot also has a tendency to vanish at times.

This is a pretty game and has some interesting parts, but just didn't keep me interested to the end.