Painkiller

I watch this guy's reviews every week:


I've had my eye on Painkiller for a while now... what's not to like? It's an FPS, it takes place in Hell, and... well that's pretty much it. It used to be $20 on Steam, and I was kind of ambivalent about it. Yeah, I love shooting things and satanic imagery, but really, $20 is a bit much for a cheap thrill. Then I watched Yahtzee's review and thought, "Over 50 distinct varieties of dudes to murder?! OKAY!!!" and sure enough it was only $9.99. Well, shit, I can't say "no" for that price. And apparently neither can a lot of people, because since this review came out on Wednesday, Painkiller has gone from nowhere to the #5 best seller on Steam. Valve even uses a line from Yahtzee's review in the ad banner for Painkiller: "All you really need to know is there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning."

There is an old game called Serious Sam that I have never played, but from what I understand, it's simply an FPS whose claim to fame is obscene amounts of monsters in a small amount of space and you have to kill all of them. Painkiller is a lot like that in that each level is essentially made up of several "rooms" and you enter a room, it locks you in, and a shitload of monsters spawn for you to murder. Once you've killed everything in a room, everything unlocks and an arrow helpfully points you to the next area you need to get to - rinse and repeat. As repetitive as it sounds, it actually gets your adrenaline pumping as it essentially throws so many monsters at you at once that you have to constantly keep moving and firing just to stay alive. Furthermore each level seems to have it's own types of monsters with their own special abilities so that it doesn't get old, or hasn't for me yet anyways.

One of my favorite things about video games like this is a wide variety of baddies. One of the weakest points of Bioshock, in my opinion, is that there's so few types of enemies - Thuggish Splicers, Leadhead Splicers, Nitro Splicers, Spider Splicers and Big Daddies. That's really five enemies spread out over a 10 to 20 hour game. Meanwhile, in Painkiller, each level is 15 minutes long and you get two to three different distinct types of enemies.

And that brings up another thing I love about this, it's easy to sit down, play for a few minutes and then quit. I'm getting to the age where I like that kind of thing. Don't get me wrong, I love long, engaging story arcs that make you just want to put a bucket under your desk and play through to the end, but it doesn't jive with real life right now, so it's nice when I can boot up the game, clear a room, save and get on with my day.

So overall, for $10, definitely worth it. $20? Maybe, maybe not, but definitely not worth more than $20.