As simple as first person shooters can get
Painkiller is really about as simple as it gets. All the game throws you from level to level, occasionally leaving you there to fill the blanks as to why you are there in the first place, and slaughtering hordes and hordes of any poor legion of hell unfortunate enough to be in your way.
Painkiller is a good game, but with some design flaws really made it difficult for me to give it a score above an 8. For example, the game has black tarot cards, items that will be unlocked when you complete certain tasks per mission - such as killing all the monsters in the level.
Now, you see, the game often gives you a task that just doesn't seem right to do, like investigating all the nook and crannies per level to find all objects that have to be destroyed rather that something that would make sense in a game like this, such as kill 30 enemies with the shotgun, for example.
Another thing that also got on my nerves in the game were the souls - a green orb left behind after you kill an enemy. You have to collect these souls in order to turn into this mean beastie thing that kills monsters quicker than usual, however the effect lasts a very short period of time. (which i don't consider a bad thing)
The problem is, that you have to wait until the game decides to make the enemy disappear and waiting isn't exactly what this is all about.
Too too often i would try to keep moving around the place and killing monsters and then attempting collect souls only to find them disappear just when I'm about to reach them.
These flaws really irritate me at times, but most of the time I'm just too busy killing things to notice it while I'm actually playing the game itself.
There isn't a huge library of weapons, which disappoints me, but the weapons do come with an alternate fire mode, which i guess could make up for the limited amount of guns...
All in all Painkiller is worth the cheap price now, and it does a great job of distracting you from it's problems with the sexy, sexy violence ;P
