After an EMBARRASSINGLY long time (I believe it took at least 3 years) I finally got around to beating Painkiller. For those of you wondering what the hell it is, Painkiller is an FPS from 2004 from Polish developers People Can Fly. The best way I can describe it is that it's a balls to the wall, kill everything in front of you old school style FPS. It is more in the pool of games like the original Dooms (1+2) and Serious Sam. For a game that is nearly 10 years old overall it holds up well. The levels run the gambit of a military base, a city, a sub base, a church, etc etc, and each one has their own types of enemies to kill, which adds to the variety quite a bit. Finally the variety of weapons is pretty cool, such as the tree shooter which basically fires half a tree at enemies and can pin them to the walls, or the "Painkiller" which is a short range spinning blade that can rip enemies into confetti. And the music rocks as well. Whenever enemies come up, appropriate death metal music starts playing to get you in the mood to start killing.
Of course the game isn't perfect, but the complaints are rather minor. The biggest one is with the story. The basic plot of the game is that the main character Daniel and his wife Catherine get into a car accident and die. Catherine goes to heaven while Daniel goes to Purgatory. Heaven tells Daniel that if he joins them in their fight against Lucifer that he can cleanse his soul and get his wife back in heaven, and then Daniel goes around killing everything between him and hell to try and kill Lucifer. There is more to it than that but I think that like me, you won't care. The whole story is told through cutscenes that come up in between the game's 5 chapters and I have to say that watching them is like trying to eat cement. Said story does not affect gameplay and thus after chapter 3 I stopped caring and just skipped through it. The ending is disappointing as well, but given that the other cutscenes didn't inspire me enough to care I suppose the ending can be credited for keeping things consistent. Other complaints are that the enemy AI is pathetic, with guys just charging at you and firing as opposed to using real strategies. Don't expect even Half-Life or Halo 1 levels of sophistication, but rather that of Duke Nukem 3D. And finally when enemies die they release soul power ups that you can collect to heal yourself and also temporarily enter a "super mode" but it takes more than 5 seconds for these things to come out and they don't hang around for long, so if you're trying to collect them it messes up the game's pace quite a bit. Oh yeah, and the bosses are annoying, but I'd prefer the bosses be that way as opposed to being easy, which is a rather disturbing trend I've noticed occurring nowadays
Overall Painkiller is a nice departure from the overly "sophisticated modern FPS" genre that we have grown accustomed to. It's a nice reminder that sometimes you just want to kill everything in front of you by yourself and then be rewarded for it. The game is currently available on GOG and Steam for $10, which I think is a more than fair price, although if you want to hold out it'll probably be on sale eventually. Oh, and there is an HD re-release of the game but it's double the price and has fewer levels (supposedly this was done to remove the "bad levels".) I'd recommend just getting the original Painkiller:Black Edition for the best overall experience. I give it a B+.
My PC gaming kick has been continuing on. Thanks to some sales I've picked up X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Faster Than Light (FTL) and To the Moon. X-Com seems somewhat overwhelming but considering how many GOTY awards it won I figured I owed it to give it a shot. To the Moon I bought on a sales whim and while I've only played it for about an hour I'm already intrigued. It's an indie game in retro style, meaning that it looks like it could run on the SNES. I've read that it is more of an interactive story as opposed to a true game, similar to Tell Tale's "The Walking Dead," which is something I'm always up for. One thing I can say already is that the game deserves praise if for nothing else it's soundtrack.
Hell even the opening theme is enough to make you tear up with feelings of inspiration and hope. I'll probably delve into that one first before I dig into X-Com, and FTL still needs to be installed. In any case it looks like my 360 and PS3 will continue their current roles as dust magnets until Bioshock: Infinite is released, or the new Metal Gear arrives in my mailbox.