Old school seems to be the euphemism of choice for this FPS.
User Rating: 5.4 | Painkiller PC
The good: 1) Performance: Painkiller performs very well on today's gaming boxes. Running on a system with a p4, good FSB speed, gig of ram, and an FX series nvidia or comparible card you should have zero issues with your frames per second. The game installs somewhat slow which can be annoying to someone drooling for a fix. The sceens load quickly well all accept the "boss" sceens which take considerable time to load. *** Note: This is version 1.0 of the game. When I installed the patches my system took a nose dive in performance. I've encountered none of the major issues in the single player mode that the patches "fixed" so I would not recommend applying these patches if all you plan on doing is playing the single player. *** 2) Gameplay: This game is very easy to pick up and learn. I would give the learning curve to a beginning FPS gamer less than 30 minutes to become adept enough to defeat the game in reasonable time. To a seasoned gamer you will need to be quite intoxicated to not find the gameplay overly easy. Which could be a downer but I am trying to be objective here! The bad: 1) Combat: The combat is very early 90's. The enemies have piss poor AI with equally poor pathing. You enter a room and imediatly the doorway behind you becomes blocked and you now have to fight 30 or so creatures. After the 4th time you do this and realise the entire game is going to be just this you begin to think this was a very well done amatuer game instead of a major release. All you do is slaughter through hundreds of enemies with no need for skill, thought, or even reflexes in the gaming sense. Was good back in the early 90's but there's a reason FPS's have evolved. 2) Soundtrack: The soundtrack is almost nonexistent which is fine. Most FPS's I end up turning the music off but in this game it plays a part as the music only comes on when you have enemies in the area. 3) Audio: The games audio is trash. YOu have your monsters making noise when they die, you have some cheap sounds here and there, and of course the groan of the boss characters. They had such potential in this area as do most FPS's but they fell far short of even shooting par. Triple bogie for these lads. 4) Challenge: There is next to no challenge in this game other than the 4 Generals of Hell that any experienced gamer will encounter. The game is far too easy on standard mode. All you need are some of the basic skills of a FPS gamer and you will sleepwalk through Painkiller. 5) Story: Anytime you get heaven and hell involved the story possibilities are limitless and potentialy great. However Painkiller fell far short of what could have been. Cheesy intro to the game followed by a laughable dialog between your character who is dead and now in Limbo yet still able to die, eh? You are told to kill the devil's four generals of hell if you want to see your wife again. Kill...generals of hell...who are obviously already dead...since their in hell....then of course you are asked if you want weapons...to which you reply no because obviously you know where to get weapons since you have survived this long in limbo errr pergatory. So you naturally find a shotgun lying around on the ground....and shells planted throughout the game, in hell, in limbo, because what says the afterlife quite like shotguns? The ugly: 1) Pathing: The pathing in this game is pretty shotty. If you are faced with a hoard of nasties that you can not seem to defeat (you shouldn't but just in case you can't) just find a crevice somewhere in a wall or between a couple of large static objects and let the enemy come to you in angles that allow only yourself with a ranged weapon a chance to kill while they just run around going where is he?! These mistakes I'd not expact in a game designed in the more advanced era of FPS's that I believe I live in. To sum this game up, I killed a general of hell with a shotgun. The fight was fun but uhm, I killed him with a shotgun. I also found shotgun ammo around him. Shotgun ammo, in hell. But of course? This game has no story to it worth paying attention to. This game is designed for one thing and one thing only and that's to appeal to the gamer who wants to just load up and shoot stuff. Problem is I stopped being that gamer when I started paying bills. If you're 13 you may find this enjoyable. If you're not, this gamer says don't spend the money. 
