Who would have thought that hell could be this fun?
For those people who think that all these newfangled first person shooters flooding the market are getting completely played out, Toronto publisher Dreamcatcher has just the solution. It's called Painkiller: Hell Wars.
Painkiller, developed by People Can Fly, takes away all the extraneous stuff from first person shooters and offers a refreshingly simple take on the genre, harkening back to the Doom and Serious Sam series. You're essentially given a gun and beyond that, it's up to you to fight through hordes of monsters - no need to worry about aiming grenades, ducking under things or finding the most tactical way of making your way through a level. This game is about running from room to room, guns blazing with barely a few seconds to catch your breath. Some may call it repetitive. We call it fun.
The game revolves around Daniel Garner, a man who drives head-on into a semi-truck one rainy night with his wife Catherine in the passenger seat. Both of them die and while Catherine gets a one-way ticket through the Pearl Gates, things aren't as easy for Daniel. He's given a choice at the gates of heaven - help take down Lucifer's armies, or spend eternity in hell. It doesn't take a messenger of God to guess that Daniel chooses the former, which sets up the game's five chapters, each consisting of five levels. Though technically the game takes place 'somewhere between heaven and hell', a lot of the levels look like they could be taken straight from Earth - an opera house, an insane asylum, swamps, prisons, etc. At first glance the levels may seem simplistic, but there is actually a lot more to them than meets the eye. They're all given a creepy, gritty feel that keep in tune with the game itself. You're not taking down a terrorist organization in Las Vegas, after all. You're killing wave upon wave of demons.
Though the game can be played as a straightforward shooter (enter room, kill, repeat), there are some secrets sprinkled throughout to add some depth. Hidden areas, piles of gold and special holy items are just a few of the things that can be found. Everything is tallied up for you when you complete each mission so you can keep track of what you found and what you missed, and this is where a lot of the game's replayability comes into play. There are four difficulty settings but to open the third-hardest difficulty, you have to find all the black tarot cards (more on those in a moment) on the second-hardest difficulty.
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The tarot cards are accumulated as you complete certain objectives, such as finishing a level with only one type of gun or picking up a certain amount of gold. These cards can be activated before a level and each one gives Daniel a special ability, such as more health, faster gun reloading times or doubling the amount of gold you pick up. Activating these cards costs money, so make sure to pick up as much gold as possible; without it, the tarot cards are essentially useless.
Though there are only six guns in the game, all of them have a primary and alternate fire - each of which is very different from the other. For instance, the shotgun - a staple of the FPS genre - can also blast a nitrogen shot at enemies, freezing them on the spot. The SMG is also a flamethrower, the chaingun doubles as a rocket launcher ... well, you get the idea. Most of them result in a satisfying deluge of flesh and bone. The one big problem we had was that only two guns plus the Painkiller can be mapped to the D-pad at a time. It becomes quite cumbersome having to return to the gun menu and re-map what two guns you're holding at any given time. God only knows why the gamer can't just cycle through each of the six guns.
The game looks quite nice and features some absolutely gigantic bosses and some very cool CG cutscenes, but it does suffer from some very noticeable framerate issues when several enemies are onscreen.
Though the voice acting is above average, the use of music could have done with some tweaking. Basically, each level is draped in silence until enemies enter a room, at which point a generic heavy metal track kicks in and loops until all enemies are taken out. This means no surprises, as the second you hear the music start up, you know enemies are coming.
The other big reason for shooter fans to check this game out is because of the online multiplayer, which is surprisingly well done. As with the single player mode, it's no fuss, no muss. Just set up or join a game and start shooting. The customization when creating a game is better than a lot of 'next-gen' first person shooters ('Prey', anyone?). There are seven multiplayer modes and when creating a game, there’s also a thorough list of customization options if you're really particular about certain things. The games run very smoothly, with little lag. The arenas are also well-designed and tailor-made for this kind of pick-up-and-play multiplayer fun.
A pessimistic gamer will look at Painkiller: Hell Wars as nothing more than a run-of-the-mill shoot 'em up ported from PC to Microsoft's previous generation system. Look a little deeper, and you may be pleasantly surprised to find that there's a lot more to it.
WHAM! Rating: |
7.8 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
M (Mature 17+) |
Official Web Site: |
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