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Throughout the entourage of FPS games plaguing the PC these days, it’s hard to sift through the crap to get to the good stuff. So many developers are trying new takes on the genre, some with more success than others, but Painkiller doesn’t try anything new at all, and maybe that’s where the base appeal is. As soon as you start up Painkiller, you are thrown into a nostalgic experience akin to the shooters of old, the likes of Doom, Quake etc. There is a base storyline that you don’t care much about, you get some big guns, tons of ammo, and you do a number on Hell’s army; A simple premise, yes, but a fun one.

The game opens with a CG that sets up the story: your character leaves home with his wife in a car. They are on their way to a date (I think) when suddenly they get walloped by an oncoming truck. Both you and your wife die. You are then kept from the solitude of Heaven, and recruited as a soldier in the war against Hell. You are informed that if you do not fulfill this task, you’re likely to never see your wife again. Being the love struck fellow you are, you begrudgingly accept the offer, knowing it’s the only way you will see your beloved again. You are then given a list of the names and locations of 4 of the generals of Hells army, and told to kill them. So begins Painkiller.

Thankfully, there aren’t many of these CG cut scenes, because while they are nice looking, the voice acting could be a lot better, and the story progression could have been handled with a bit more finesse, instead of the dry story that we’re given. The most important part of the game though, is once you’re actually in control, and thankfully, by that point, you don’t care why you’re fighting off demons from Hell, you’re just having fun doing it.

From the get go, Painkiller drops you in levels filled to the brim with all manner of vicious creatures. There are plenty of enemy types in the game, ranging anywhere from evil monks to straight jacketed lunatics, and a variety of things in between. All the enemy types you see are pretty cool, and detailed nicely. The games boss creatures are huge, dwarfing your character in the same ratio as a building would. The boss fights are initially too easy though, because once you figure out how to kill the specific boss you’re fighting, it becomes just a matter of time before you win the battle.

The levels in the game vary pretty dramatically, pitting you in various environments from huge gothic churches to graveyards. Each level is chalk full of plenty of destroyable objects. Crates, pieces of the environment are all at your mercy as you blast away at the evil hordes of Hell. For a good part of the game, you’ll be fighting dozens of monsters at once. When you’re playing Painkiller, the chances of you being alone and things being quiet, are slim to none. The gameplay mechanics are simple: you enter a room, ‘all Hell breaks loose’ (sorry for the pun), and once you clear the room, you can move on. The game has a simple, yet useful navigator at the top of the screen that points you in the direction of the next checkpoint. It even tells you whether or not the checkpoint is above or below you, a handy feature to have that will save you 10’s of minutes surely.

Blasting away at the hordes of demons will release their souls when they die. The glowing, swirling green auras can be collected to regenerate health, but mainly once you collect a set amount, you enter a temporary demon form that allows you to totally decimate the entire room with minimal effort in slow motion. There’s a cool visual effect tied with the demon form, but it’s cooler to see than to hear about. The guns you’ll be blasting away with in Painkiller is a varied lot indeed: from the standard fair shotguns, to the outrageous (and undeniably cool) wooden stake gun. Each gun has a secondary fire option (though they’re attached in a rather random fashion) that can really help out in a tight spot.

All the good aside, Painkiller does have it’s drawbacks, though menial. The enemy types seem to be randomly placed, with no specific purpose in mind. You can end up (at some points) fighting off 3 completely unrelated types of monsters in one area, thinking to yourself ‘why are they in here?’. The levels in the game, while beautiful looking, also seem pretty random. There is really no reason to have all the different types of levels the game has as far as making sense goes. It almost seems like they decided to include certain levels just because they looked really good. These complaints are but minor ones, and they really don’t impact a trigger-happy shooter like Painkiller.

Visually, Painkiller is outstanding. High-res enemies, gorgeous environments and the Havoc 2.0 physics engine make Painkiller one serious piece of eye candy. The game runs smoothly on even some of the older systems, which is a welcome change, considering you don’t suffer the graphical loss you usually do on older PCs. Hopefully, in the future, other developers will be able to find ways of pushing out beautiful visuals without having to boost the system requirements. The varied art styles showcased in the game really give you a sense of satisfaction as you plow through hordes of Hell’s army.

The sound in the game is a mixed bag, offering a bit of good, a bit of bad. The sound effect from the guns all sound great, and the noises emanating from the armies of enemies you come across give you a real sense that they are indeed evil, evil things. The generic and bland rock soundtrack the game spews out, on the other hand, is less than impressive, and you really won’t find yourself paying much attention to it after a while.

The games multiplayer plays just like games like Quake 2 did. A simple game of deathmatch where you pit ‘x’ number of player into a large area, give them guns, armor and ammo, and see who survives. Currently, the game doesn’t have many maps to choose from, and the lack of multiplayer skins to choose from is sad. I would have loved to play online as one of those evil monks, they’re my favorite. I’ll give Painkiller some credit though, it does go out of its way to change things up in a few of the multiplayer modes. One is a sort of Quad damage tag, where one player gets the Quad and other players have to try to kill them to try to obtain the Quad themselves. The last person with the Quad damage when the time runs out wins. The multiplayer for Painkiller really had potential, but there isn’t enough variety to hook you.

Painkiller is a good shooter by today’s standards, and an amazing one by the old-school run-and-gun standard, which is exactly what Painkiller was trying to do in the first place. Some beautiful visuals, interesting enemy types and non-stop action make Painkiller the surprise hit of 2004. Get it.