Steam Sale Review: Painkiller

Once or twice a week I glance guiltily at this blog on my favourites list. I then do something else. I just really don't care about finishing up all the posts I have already promised. They are what I was thinking about months ago, I no longer care or remember enough to do anything about them.

But not tonight, because I'm reviewing:


Remember first person shooters like Doom? Where it was basically you mowing down hordes and plot was something to fill the back of the box? For everyone who misses those days Painkiller is the game for you.

It is not the game for me.

I'm not going to bother mentioning story or actual characters; Painkiller makes Braid look like an epic legend written by both Shakespeare and Tolkien.

Gameplay consists of you entering a room/area, killing every single present enemy, somewhere new opening up, continue previous steps until the level ends.There aren't many guns but they each have alternate fire and deserve special mention that the story's characters don't.
-The starting weapon doubles as your melee option and the crappy infinite ammo gun. It has several tricks up its sleeve, none of which I bothered to learn;
-The shotgun is your bread and butter gun. Its effectiveness is second only to its mundaneness. The alt fire is a single target freeze shot because shut up that's why;
-Next is the parabolic projectile weapon. It shoots stakes or grenades, and functions as crude sniper till you get something better (you don't);
-After that is a gun that mixes two of the most powerful stock weapons together: a rocket launcher and minigun.Somehow this gun still manages to be very underwhelming;
-Lastly there's the infamous gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I couldn't determine the use for this gun apart from giving the internet a boner. The minigun was better than the shurikens and the shotgun was better than the lightning.

What's great about this game is the diversity of both the locations and the enemies. One level you are in a castle, the next a military base, then mass graveyard. Monsters might be hellhounds, undead WW1 soldiers, or demonic children. The only problem with this is that there is no clever unifying themes behind this, and no real difference gameplay features, just different skins and stats.

There is one flaw in Painkiller that overshadows EVERYTHING else. The game is repetitive. After the first few levels you have already experienced everything the game has to offer aside from higher difficulties and other visuals. Painkiller can't even be called a grind because that implies you make some sort of progress.
This was the only game of the ten I did not finish. I got to the second last boss, was killed several times, and decided that I didn't care enough to continue on. Painkiller is the sort of game that makes me wish I could delete stuff permanently from Steam. I don't like sitting in the same list as stuff like Portal, World of Goo, or Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines.

In the end the only redeeming thing I can say about Painkiller is that it gives you the opportunity to shoot children in an orphanage, because how often do you get to do that?