Despite having always been a savoury man, favouring a leek and potato pie over anything sweet, I have to appreciate cake. Generally rich and flavoursome, cake can completely dominate you when you eat it.
However even if you are a lover of cake you must consider the other perspective. Cake can be bloating and overwhelming; only the most gluttonous could eat it every day with its excessive amounts of empty calories, carbohydrates and fat. You’re looking at an early and unpleasant trip to the grave on that kind of diet.
To a certain extent that is how I feel about games. Too much cake and not enough fodder like Painkiller: Hell & Damnation. If Painkiller were a food it would be a cheese and tomato sandwich or cornflakes. It is simple, uncomplicated and effective.
It is a game in which you get dumped into rooms where enemies spawn and you are tasked with killing them all. You have weapons such as rocket launchers that have a secondary function as mini-guns. Painkiller is unapologetically functional and all the better for it. This is a world where RPG elements are unnecessary whereas a good knowledge of circle-strafing and bunny-hopping is paramount.
Sitting down and playing this game is like a good workout or beach-side stroll; it relaxes the brain and never allows you pause between waves to try and think objectively about what you are doing. It is the antidote to the ever-more complex games out there which layer too much crap onto an experience that doesn’t need it.
The only stumbling block is the game’s tarot card system, which requires the player to perform specific actions to unlock perks. This breaks the pace of the game.
Otherwise Painkiller is the kind of game that we need more of. It might be plain but in many ways it is lean and healthy. And that’s something you can’t say about cake.
Comments
9 responses to “Mid-Week F.A.P: Painkiller: Hell & Damnation”
You might want to give Paranautical Activity a go.
Just looked that up, why is it that developers have such shoddy looking websites? I have an excuse as I have no idea what I am doing on the internet, let alone producing content for it, but these guys build bloody games and that is an awful site.
Other than that it looks really nice, might be a bit too inspired by the Mindecraft aesthetic (is that a crime to say? You know like when someone says something looks Cel-shaded when the visual style is just cartoony?) but the whole thing seems to play out at a break neck speed and be about making thinks explode.
The only thing that worries me is that it has a loot system. That is already more complicated than Painkiller.
Yeah PA is a lot of circle-strafing and bunny hopping in small rooms. No worry about aiming, just fucking move.
Would I be right in thinking that this is a port or re-issue of the original Painkiller? I recognise that monk with the axe.
I didn't really get too into the first Painkiller – some lovely high-speed firefights but overall it just didn't draw me in. I think I gave up right after beating the boss who you have to defeat using some aspect of the environment (dropping him in some lava, I think?). That boss was rubbish.
It seems to be a bit Evil Dead II versus Evil Dead. Kind of a remake, kind of a re-imagining.
I've fought two bosses so far and neither required that.
Ah here we go, it was this guy – a mini-boss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1RR4i_l5Xg
Looking at that video the environmental cues are more obvious than I remember. :/
That guy is gone, or I fought him while I was drunk. He made no impact on me at any point.
One was a huge 15 storey high giant fucker the other was a dragon bastard.
Show off.
Those bosses do sound pretty neat. Reminds me of the final boss on whatever the Xbox version of Serious Sam was. A big dude the size of a pyramid. Fond of firing rockets.
Good use of "fond".