By Alec Meer on October 17th, 2007 at 1:41 pm.
God, Painkiller was rubbish. Really, really awful. Having the hell marketed out of it made it briefly popular with pro-gaming types, though – I’ve even had the curious pleasure of being beaten soundly at it by Fatal1ty, though unfortunately I got shouted at by his mate/PR/bodyguard-guy for daring to touch his mouse.
Anyway, Painkiller: Overdose, the inevitable sequel, is on its way soon, and here’s the demo to prove it. Yes, it was released several days back. No, I wasn’t paying attention, probably because it’s been released so close to a great number of interesting first-person shooters, making this demo a little like a man in the street offering you a shrivelled sausage on a stick when you’re walking down a road full of gourmet restaurants. As a point of principle I’m not touching this one in my own time (though I’ll do it for money, of course), so please, feel free to be my foodtasters and confirm my suspicion that this dish is riddled with poisons.
17/10/2007 at 13:44 fluffy bunny says:
You are so wrong about Painkiller.
17/10/2007 at 13:45 Jim Rossignol says:
I didn’t like the multi-player much (too much of a Quake 3 purist, I guess) but the single player kept me entertained for a bit.
17/10/2007 at 14:05 David says:
Yeah, the single player was fun. Also, this isn’t a sequel, and yes it’s rubbish because it’s made by a mod team.
17/10/2007 at 14:15 Alec Meer says:
Gamename Colon Subtitle and it not being an addon pack is enough to call something a sequel in my book.
17/10/2007 at 14:31 ran93r says:
I quite liked Painkiller, SP and MP. It was brainless but no more so than Serious Sam and I never did understand why so many people fawned over that.
17/10/2007 at 14:38 Sören Höglund says:
Serious Sam had pacing Painkiller could only dream of, at least judging from the demo. Not touching the new one unless everyone proclaims it brilliant, I’ve too many games to play as it is.
17/10/2007 at 14:44 Cargo Cult says:
For a game supposedly inspired by the ‘old-school’ antics of Doom, the first Painkiller seemed to forget something very important.
Doom’s maps were nowhere near as linear!
I played the original Painkiller demo. It looked pretty, but bored me to death.
17/10/2007 at 14:45 Kieron Gillen says:
Soren: That’s the difference between Painkiller and Serious Sam, and it upset me that a chunk of reviewers really couldn’t tell the difference between the pair.
KG
17/10/2007 at 14:46 Alec Meer says:
Also, Serious Sam had gags.
17/10/2007 at 15:01 tom says:
Do any games exist that aren’t FPSs anymore?
Almost every post you RPS guys make is FPS, good job you dont suffer from the fabled Japenese anti-fps-motion-sickness gene
17/10/2007 at 15:12 Kieron Gillen says:
It does seem that this week is a week for FPS. Hmm.
KG
17/10/2007 at 15:21 Jim Rossignol says:
Actually, of the posts currently on the front page the majority are non-FPS related stories.
17/10/2007 at 15:33 tom says:
OK stat fight! outside now! bring your pie charts….
17/10/2007 at 16:15 FringeRock says:
Ok, let’s all take time out from a source based game and play Company of Heroes for a bit. We’re grown ups, we can share!
17/10/2007 at 16:17 Jim Rossignol says:
I’m playing World In Conflict, in a minute. I just have to… play TF2.
17/10/2007 at 16:45 FringeRock says:
Actually yeah, I forgot WiC is just sitting there waiting for me to give it some “how the funk do I play this” time …
17/10/2007 at 16:47 Andrew says:
I would actually be very up for some Company-of-Heroes content here, as one of the recent posts intimated. That would be fun.
17/10/2007 at 16:49 Hypocee says:
Sorry, Painkiller’s ace.
17/10/2007 at 19:22 Heartless_ says:
I found Painkiller to be a fairly fun romp in single-player. The levels had a fairly good vibe to them, but I will admit a few of the more memorable fights were a bit predictable. The multi-player was average, but by far not horrid. The pacing was fast and furious, but that is something that a lot of people (myself included) enjoyed.
Reviewers don’t sit around and complain that a game like Diablo is too fast, even though you are downing enemies at the same rate as in Painkiller.
17/10/2007 at 20:50 Turin Turambar says:
I vote for a beating for everyone who says it’s “old school like Doom”. No, play Doom some more, it was in another league. The more varied pace, the flow of the action, the weapons, the superb design, etc etc, just because a game have a high count in the number of enemies doesn’t make it like Doom.
17/10/2007 at 21:07 James Lyon says:
Well I kinda liked it. I think I was carried along on Doom nostalgia at the time. It did eventually get boring, though. I only kept on playing because I’d been told it had an excellent final level.
18/10/2007 at 00:03 Jens Arnesen says:
Painkiller was… Ah. Painkiller was a little bit like healing on boss fights in WoW, you’re too busy clicking things you don’t really care about to notice that under it all lies an incredibly dull game concept. Kill things until they stop coming at you, then move ten feet and kill some more! For five consecutive hours! It’s just not interesting, if you ask me. If I want mindless button-mashing I’ll play Frets on Fire.
For the record, I, too, have been slaughtered by Fatal1ty in Painkiller. I got a wristband for being good enough to only be killed 14 times in two minutes.
18/10/2007 at 00:11 Thelps says:
@ Jens: WoW healing is the true modern incarnation of Whack-a-Mole. Painkiller is the equivalent of that but with more psychedelic colours, so your brain is too busy processing images to notice that you’re engaged in a form of orgasmless masturbation.
02/11/2007 at 04:41 Fatting says:
Well, since no-one has commented on the demo yet, I might as well. It’s utter shit. The weapons are all boring or simply reskinned Painkiller guns, and the levels are not very interesting. Neither are the enemies. Did I mention that the protagonist is obnoxious and embarrassing? You will bring your palm to your face for every single one of his one-liners.
I liked Painkiller because of the interesting levels and enemies – I am a firm believer that the final level, Hell, is the most awe-inspiring game level of all time – but Overdose is terrible. Simply terrible.
10/02/2009 at 17:35 Senethro says:
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!
A tag from far in the future has brought me here, and I feel it necessary to say that Painkiller and its expansion pack were most definitely ace.
24/02/2009 at 16:28 RiptoR says:
@Senethro : true, the original game + expansion were sweet, but overdose is a pile of steaming ****. I’ve played the demo, and they completely fucked up the things (weapons, leveldesign) that made Painkiller great imho.
31/05/2009 at 19:13 Bhazor says:
Well in that case Alec, I’m afraid I must leave you to the grey corridors and single enemy type shooters you prefer. Goodbye sir.
You’re right. It’s not like Doom. Doom was filled with sprawling maps laden with key fetch missions, uneven learning curves, weapons that do differing damage but don’t actually vary in anyother significant way, had no AI and is over 16 years old. Fank Thuck it isn’t the same.
31/05/2009 at 19:25 Nick says:
Huh? The weapons differed from each other in firing speed, projectile speed, spread and blast radius…