Policy
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I'll get this out of the way first, this game unquestionably flounders in many places: the bosses while impressive setpieces are incredibly unintuitave, the unlocking of cards (upgrades) from doing weird level objectives is a unique mechanic but ultimately unsatisfying to go out of your way to actually fulfill, it has a beyond moronic story where a guy decides to basically cheat on his wife halfway through with both hell and eve rendered through unbearably rendered cutscenes acted out with those FOV porn models, and it uses you playing on a lower difficulty to maliciously taunt you out of being able to play some of its levels. By all metrics these should be damning enough issues to make the game nearly unplayable, yet this is the furthest possible from the truth. What this game fails at in terms of its big moments, it makes up for in the nuances of combat flow and simplicity, allow me to elaborate.
First bit of attention to give is to the autosave system. You can go, gun down hordes of enemies while always feeling there's a potential to make it out a difficult spot, which will then reheal you and autosave the game for you after you clear the area out. Considering each level lasts around 15 to 20 minutes, you get about 5 to 8 of them a level, theres plenty of room for error without having to start from the very beginning. This solves one of the main tensions that I have with usually older shooters: no autosaving system (Max Payne, Deus Ex, and Serious Sam come to mind because they are the most recent games I've played), see I'm an incredibly stubborn person and I often take getting to the end of the level as the 'save' because something feels a bit cheap about saving on my own as an intended functional mechanic. I feel bad doing it, like I'm creating an 'easy mode' through trial and error rather than playing with the function of the mechanics in mind (dodging, posisioning, etc.) This game subtlely takes all the mental exercise and self sabatoge that comes from dealing with this process. Not only that but it cleans up how physically slow and disruptive saving a game is, sometimes you have to open a menu and hit the button to do so. You can hotsave in some of these games, regarding but even then it takes a stable mentalwork not to accidentally hotsave in a place where you will automatically die. This system gloriously and cooly takes all the mental work out of that system while still allowing you to manual it anyway if you're feeling desperate.
Another plus is, ironically, how limited the weapon roster is, you have 4 different weapons and your base weapon, and called the painkiller and right off the bat they made a really smart choice to let the Painkiller actually be an incredibly strong base weapon, it wont save you in a horde but it can take you far. More interestingly they main the subweapon on each of the weapons feel completely distinct. For example, theres a grenade launcher subattack, attached to the stake gun (meant to staple enemies away), which means you can use the main attack to clamp specific enemies away and use the grenade with distance from the horde, all of the weapons have neat unexpected combos like this. It also means they can build levels with the ammo for the weapon types in mind. If they want to, they can make it so theres enough ammo across all of them, but forcing you to oscillate your playstyle and not get too comfortable with just 1 weapon. This allows the pickups to always feel valuable in a way other games might flounder at. It's a quality over quantity approach, and I can appreciate this in particular when compared to other games. Max Payne for example will have you picking up around 10 to 13 weapons in its campaign, but the issue is that you're going to be in a bind in a fire fight if you run out of ammo for one weapon only to then have to frantically scroll through the baseball bat, the beretta, etc. just to get to the shotgun. Either that or you run your finger up from the keys hoping you hit the right number, impairing you capacity to move unless you're just really good at keyboard gaming/memory mapping. By comparison in Painkiller, you run the scroll wheel once, maybe twice, and you have a good weapon, dont even have to think about it. It also just allows for more creative enemy design since by design some of the weapons will be better to use against certain enemies than others, and since new enemies are constantly introduced in every round, with very little enemy reuse, you are forced to experiment and figure out what works.
Now lets say you just got done gunning a room, you realize the door wont open until you kill all the enemies but you don't know where it is. Guess again! You can look at a compass which will show you where the last enemy is, usually perched on some sort of tower. Then, after you dispatch them, you can waltz over to the checkpoint and heal up, which is also shown the direction on the compass! The one other great thing is that during boss fights, the health bar is indicated on the compass rather than bloating up original visual space on the bottom or the top of the screen, with the circular indicator of health being a lot easier to look up at and guess how much there is left then a giant bar like you might see in the likes of say borderlands, or even worse no bar at all which may make you wonder if you're even making progress.
One last thing I want to note is how speed jumping is also incredibly simple, I've never been good at bunnyhopping which means you have to do diagonal jumps for extra movement, this game just allows you to get that movement from regular constant jumping in a direction, which takes attention and skill while still feeling incredibly satisfying to do.
The other thing I really like is how the 'Demon Mode' works, Demon Mode is a mode you activate where after eating enough soul drops from enemies you can just start screaming and ragdolling enemies far away. A lot of games have these sort of contingent 'beast modes' and they always feel great to activate, but in other games the activation is ambiguous, hard to pull off when theres actually enemies etc. Well in this one, beast mode is activated when you pick up exactly 66 souls, and theres warning shots on the like 4 or 5 in a sort of phase in 'windup' (not to mention you can check in the cornor how many you have). This means that if used correctly this mechanic never suprises you, and therefore means you can hold on until you pick up the last soul(s) in a populated area, meaning you dont unleash the attack on wasted breath.
With all these tiny effects stacked up at once, there's no way to put it other than saying it gives the arena fights a beautiful sense of velocity and simplicity I tend to find lacking in these older shooter titles. And the fact the game has a great gloomy lighting effect and lovely architecture often retrofitting real life places into level design means there's not a breath wasted. The quality of life in the action of the gunplay and the assurance that, at least for this brief moment, you are done fighting, means you can take in the scenery and in the process check for items & ammo that much more.
The irony of writing all this stuff about gameplay velocity in several paragraphs is not lost to me, but the reason I feel like bringing attention to it is because I've been seeing people compare this game to Serious Sam, but I'm sorry they dont play anything alike. Serious Sam is a lot slower, illiciting you to focus on positioning, have a save file handy, and just generally your character and the enemies feel a lot slower. I remember I ran into a bull in that game and could only barely dodge it by circle strafing. Often the game would be walk forward, kite a few enemies in aggro and walk back, usually in a hallway if you can, your character moves like a tank in that game. On the contrary, Painkiller is like a roadrunner, leaving games like Serious Sam in the dust. To the extent people can even say the two are comparable, in which the only real comparison point seems to be the level statistics page which give you clarity into how many secrets and enemies are left, there's not much they seem to have in common. I will note though I find this a much appreciated 'cheat sheet' in both games but this is where comparisons begin and end for me. Regardless, if we are assessing game quality here on how fair and cathartic is is to play, its not even a contest, I think Painkiller wins out by a high mile.
Assessed on it own of course I believe it's worth trying this game out if tenatively. Even if you only get through the first 3 chapters, there's more fun gunplay there than I've found anywhere else in a long while. If that's not enough to convince you of the game design value, then at least check it out for the hilarious ragdoll death physics, this engine uses the same engine Dark Souls did, and so anybody deeply amused by how it works in that game wont be let down in this one. Expect to get frusterated, keep a boss guide handy in particular, but otherwise have fun tearing the denizens of hell a new one!
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I'll get this out of the way first, this game unquestionably flounders in many places: the bosses while impressive setpieces are incredibly unintuitave, the unlocking of cards (upgrades) from doing weird level objectives is a unique mechanic but ultimately unsatisfying to go out of your way to actually fulfill, it has a beyond moronic story where a guy decides to basically cheat on his wife halfway through with both hell and eve rendered through unbearably rendered cutscenes acted out with those FOV porn models, and it uses you playing on a lower difficulty to maliciously taunt you out of being able to play some of its levels. By all metrics these should be damning enough issues to make the game nearly unplayable, yet this is the furthest possible from the truth. What this game fails at in terms of its big moments, it makes up for in the nuances of combat flow and simplicity, allow me to elaborate.
First bit of attention to give is to the autosave system. You can go, gun down hordes of enemies while always feeling there's a potential to make it out a difficult spot, which will then reheal you and autosave the game for you after you clear the area out. Considering each level lasts around 15 to 20 minutes, you get about 5 to 8 of them a level, theres plenty of room for error without having to start from the very beginning. This solves one of the main tensions that I have with usually older shooters: no autosaving system (Max Payne, Deus Ex, and Serious Sam come to mind because they are the most recent games I've played), see I'm an incredibly stubborn person and I often take getting to the end of the level as the 'save' because something feels a bit cheap about saving on my own as an intended functional mechanic. I feel bad doing it, like I'm creating an 'easy mode' through trial and error rather than playing with the function of the mechanics in mind (dodging, posisioning, etc.) This game subtlely takes all the mental exercise and self sabatoge that comes from dealing with this process. Not only that but it cleans up how physically slow and disruptive saving a game is, sometimes you have to open a menu and hit the button to do so. You can hotsave in some of these games, regarding but even then it takes a stable mentalwork not to accidentally hotsave in a place where you will automatically die. This system gloriously and cooly takes all the mental work out of that system while still allowing you to manual it anyway if you're feeling desperate.
Another plus is, ironically, how limited the weapon roster is, you have 4 different weapons and your base weapon, and called the painkiller and right off the bat they made a really smart choice to let the Painkiller actually be an incredibly strong base weapon, it wont save you in a horde but it can take you far. More interestingly they main the subweapon on each of the weapons feel completely distinct. For example, theres a grenade launcher subattack, attached to the stake gun (meant to staple enemies away), which means you can use the main attack to clamp specific enemies away and use the grenade with distance from the horde, all of the weapons have neat unexpected combos like this. It also means they can build levels with the ammo for the weapon types in mind. If they want to, they can make it so theres enough ammo across all of them, but forcing you to oscillate your playstyle and not get too comfortable with just 1 weapon. This allows the pickups to always feel valuable in a way other games might flounder at. It's a quality over quantity approach, and I can appreciate this in particular when compared to other games. Max Payne for example will have you picking up around 10 to 13 weapons in its campaign, but the issue is that you're going to be in a bind in a fire fight if you run out of ammo for one weapon only to then have to frantically scroll through the baseball bat, the beretta, etc. just to get to the shotgun. Either that or you run your finger up from the keys hoping you hit the right number, impairing you capacity to move unless you're just really good at keyboard gaming/memory mapping. By comparison in Painkiller, you run the scroll wheel once, maybe twice, and you have a good weapon, dont even have to think about it. It also just allows for more creative enemy design since by design some of the weapons will be better to use against certain enemies than others, and since new enemies are constantly introduced in every round, with very little enemy reuse, you are forced to experiment and figure out what works.
Now lets say you just got done gunning a room, you realize the door wont open until you kill all the enemies but you don't know where it is. Guess again! You can look at a compass which will show you where the last enemy is, usually perched on some sort of tower. Then, after you dispatch them, you can waltz over to the checkpoint and heal up, which is also shown the direction on the compass! The one other great thing is that during boss fights, the health bar is indicated on the compass rather than bloating up original visual space on the bottom or the top of the screen, with the circular indicator of health being a lot easier to look up at and guess how much there is left then a giant bar like you might see in the likes of say borderlands, or even worse no bar at all which may make you wonder if you're even making progress.
One last thing I want to note is how speed jumping is also incredibly simple, I've never been good at bunnyhopping which means you have to do diagonal jumps for extra movement, this game just allows you to get that movement from regular constant jumping in a direction, which takes attention and skill while still feeling incredibly satisfying to do.
The other thing I really like is how the 'Demon Mode' works, Demon Mode is a mode you activate where after eating enough soul drops from enemies you can just start screaming and ragdolling enemies far away. A lot of games have these sort of contingent 'beast modes' and they always feel great to activate, but in other games the activation is ambiguous, hard to pull off when theres actually enemies etc. Well in this one, beast mode is activated when you pick up exactly 66 souls, and theres warning shots on the like 4 or 5 in a sort of phase in 'windup' (not to mention you can check in the cornor how many you have). This means that if used correctly this mechanic never suprises you, and therefore means you can hold on until you pick up the last soul(s) in a populated area, meaning you dont unleash the attack on wasted breath.
With all these tiny effects stacked up at once, there's no way to put it other than saying it gives the arena fights a beautiful sense of velocity and simplicity I tend to find lacking in these older shooter titles. And the fact the game has a great gloomy lighting effect and lovely architecture often retrofitting real life places into level design means there's not a breath wasted. The quality of life in the action of the gunplay and the assurance that, at least for this brief moment, you are done fighting, means you can take in the scenery and in the process check for items & ammo that much more.
The irony of writing all this stuff about gameplay velocity in several paragraphs is not lost to me, but the reason I feel like bringing attention to it is because I've been seeing people compare this game to Serious Sam, but I'm sorry they dont play anything alike. Serious Sam is a lot slower, illiciting you to focus on positioning, have a save file handy, and just generally your character and the enemies feel a lot slower. I remember I ran into a bull in that game and could only barely dodge it by circle strafing. Often the game would be walk forward, kite a few enemies in aggro and walk back, usually in a hallway if you can, your character moves like a tank in that game. On the contrary, Painkiller is like a roadrunner, leaving games like Serious Sam in the dust. To the extent people can even say the two are comparable, in which the only real comparison point seems to be the level statistics page which give you clarity into how many secrets and enemies are left, there's not much they seem to have in common. I will note though I find this a much appreciated 'cheat sheet' in both games but this is where comparisons begin and end for me. Regardless, if we are assessing game quality here on how fair and cathartic is is to play, its not even a contest, I think Painkiller wins out by a high mile.
Assessed on it own of course I believe it's worth trying this game out if tenatively. Even if you only get through the first 3 chapters, there's more fun gunplay there than I've found anywhere else in a long while. If that's not enough to convince you of the game design value, then at least check it out for the hilarious ragdoll death physics, this engine uses the same engine Dark Souls did, and so anybody deeply amused by how it works in that game wont be let down in this one. Expect to get frusterated, keep a boss guide handy in particular, but otherwise have fun tearing the denizens of hell a new one!