Painkiller: Overdose review

Dec 5, 2007

This is a game that opens with concept art of a 68-year-old transvestite in purple makeup and horns, uses the word ‘hate’ nine times in the interminable intro movie, and begins with some of the worst FPS combat we’ve seen in our career. But eventually, bunnyhopping around the game’s ugly morons, firing its copycat weapons and enduring your character’s cringingly unfunny and excruciatingly repetitious one-liners gets surprisingly compelling. Even after load times that the developers themselves have called “terrible.”

Painkiller was made by a bunch of modders who really liked Quake, and this standalone semi-official expansion is made by a bunch of modders who really liked Painkiller. Really, really liked Painkiller.

Now, these people don’t really have any new ideas, but seem to like making extra work for themselves. They’ve designed a completely unique roster of enemies for every one of the game’s 17 levels. Yet almost none add anything to the way the game plays: they either run at you screaming or shamble around lobbing fireballs.