May Millennials 11: Painkiller: Black Edition (Outro)

The benefit of choosing a breezy action game like Painkiller for this feature is that it wasn't going to take a whole week to see everything I wanted to see. I completed the main story mode, defeating Lucifer in a very symbolic version of Hell, only to be greeted with the sucky "if you played on the hardest mode like a champ you'd get something better" downer ending. I've no real compulsion to go through all that again though, as it'd also mean completing the game at least twice more - on Nightmare, the traditional "hard" mode, and Trauma, the secret hardest mode - and, well, the game's true ending is just a few clicks away on YouTube...

I also played a few of the expansion maps since that pack came gratis with the Black Edition, but the overall quality was diminished and I faced constant crashes and other bugs. I figure if the developers can't be bothered making their game work properly, I'm not going to dig deep for the vast reserves of giving a shit required to persevere. From what I've heard, I'm not missing out on much, though I'll commend the DLC for addressing some of the balance issues with the original's world design: easier secrets to find (with less clippy wall-hugging and mid-air twisty jumps required) and harder Tarot card unlock conditions (fair enough given how useful they are; maybe not something you're supposed to be able to unlock easily on your first run through a map).

I think overall I'm still ambivalent about Painkiller, though I'll quickly admit that much of that is waiting over fifteen years to play it and forcing myself to attain those Tarot unlock conditions - like achievements, they can detract from a game experience as easily as add to it if it's making you jump through hoops to make the game much harder (and less fun) on yourself. As I was playing I kept thinking about how the 2016 Doom reboot proved that there's still life in the old-school "buckets of monsters" FPS approach if the gameplay loop has enough compelling mechanical hooks. With Doom, that meant a certain amount of locomotion to avoid enemy projectiles while also making sure to close the distance on a waning demon for a showy finisher and a whole lot of the ammo you'd need to finish the rest of the fight; Painkiller has something similar with its souls system, each one giving you a small amount of extra energy and pushing you towards an invincible "Devil Trigger" style fugue state - it meant controlling the pursuing horde in such a way that you could circle around to where enemies fell, rather than the usual strategy of planting yourself in a relatively safe bottleneck and missing out on the goods. I also still admire Painkiller's sheer variety in its monsters and environments, even if it frequently made the game feel like a randomly assorted pack of wads I'd just downloaded from Doomworld (which, again, not exactly a negative). Of chief importance was that all the guns were highly entertaining to use - it probably says something when the electrified shuriken gun was the one I wielded the least often - and my wrists really got a workout (which I'm sure they'll thank me for later) quickly aiming between all those bizarre creatures before any of them could reach me, hopping around in circles with my trusty shotgun and its overpowered freeze ray alt-fire. Less said about the platforming the better, though in truth very little of it was required for anything besides accessing secret areas.

I am glad that I finally made my way around to this one, albeit while being considerably late to the party. I don't remember when it was when I fell off of FPS games; I've never really had what you'd call a state-of-the-art PC so that whole Quake/UT/Counter-Strike era mostly passed me by, and console FPS games tended to be limited in their scope and ambition past the likes of TimeSplitters 2 and Perfect Dark. Besides the occasional FPS like BioShock or Singularity, which had more going on in their single-player campaigns than just shooting grunts in the brainpan, or the more recent naissance of FPS-tangential first-person puzzle games (Portal, Antichamber) and adventure games (Gone Home, Soma), it's not a genre that I've spent a whole lot of time around in recent years. Yet Painkiller is one that stands the test of time - between its ingenuity, its variety, and its evident love for the genre and its history - and it doesn't surprise me at all that those developers are still figuring out the best means of delivering balletic ballistics with the moderately well-received Outriders. If the FPS genre still has old guard custodians like them to keep Call of Duty (tedious and uninspired) and Halo (ditto) from completely dominating that space, it's in good hands. (That said, I did recently pick up Titanfall 2 for next to nothing, so maybe someday real soon I'll see how far the FPS genre has evolved since Painkiller's day.)

As for me, it's back to janky-ass European CRPGs to see out this season of May Millennials in the manner to which it has become accustomed. Once more unto the dubious breach, dear friends, once more.

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I tried really hard to get into this game. Originally had the HD version, which just felt off in terms of the controls - which makes sense given that it was ported to a different engine.

So I tried the Black Edition, hoping the improved game feel would make it all better. Turns out there are other problems I had with it as well. Enemies literally teleporting in behind and above you was more annoying than engaging (even though I didn't mind it in TimeSplitters). The biggest issue, however, was the lack of atmosphere and/or worldbuilding. I don't need a game like this to have interesting characters or plot, but there needs to be something tying all these seemingly random levels and enemies together in order for me to be engaged.

You know what does this well? The original Serious Sam. That game plays amazingly well, and the barebones codex entries about the enemies and the feeling of progression as you go through the themed levels make all the difference in the world.

@mento Well, you have pretty much convince me to go back and play the original Painkiller. I've already played it at least 3 times(that is a whole lot for me), and all playthroughs were a very long time ago. Painkiller was much like Serious Sam, but way fun and more fitting for my taste in story and such. The enemy designs were okay to really good. It was all pretty Gothic, with right proper weapons for leading and annihilating the mobs.

The last time I played it , it was the Black edition. Nothing done afterwards could stand up to that first game. As for the Tarot system and such, I do remember it, but barely.

Just to mention it, I played a game called Amid Evil a month ago or so, and it would not surprise me if Painkiller was an influence.

@bybeach: @stealydan: I may have to try the original Serious Sam (or the HD remake, which I think I own) next year, if only to figure out which one of you I agree with.

There's been a real spate of retro FPS throwbacks of late, huh? Amid Evil's one, but there's also stuff like Dusk, Prodeus, Strafe, Seum, Wrath, and I suppose Devil Daggers as a really streamlined version of the concept. We need a Ranking of Fighters but for FPS games. First Among First-Persons, or some such.