Painkiller (video game): Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''Painkiller is in the same bucket as ''[[Serious Sam]]'' and the original [[Doom|DOOMs]] in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex modern FPSes. There are no stealth elements, no [[Fetch Quest|key hunting]], no [[Escort Mission|escort quests]], no [[Voice Withwith an Internet Connection|dorky support characters dribbling in your ear]], no [[Videogame Objectives|mission objectives]] besides '''kill everyone'''. It's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be.''|Yahtzee, severely [[Caustic Critic]] of [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/57-Painkiller Zero Punctuation].}}

''Painkiller'' is a [[First Person Shooter|FPS]] made by Polish developers People Can Fly (now absorbed by [[Epic Games]]). The game concerns Daniel Garner, a man with an idyllic life, a beautiful spouse, and whose life is tragically snipped short when a truck plows straight into his car. Daniel gets to watch as his wife goes to Heaven, but he has to stay in Purgatory where he is commissioned by God to stop Lucifer's invasion. If Lucifer takes Purgatory, he can take Earth and Heaven as well. Oh, and Eve is your companion through the game. Yeah, [[Adam and Eve Plot|that Eve.]]

Apart from the original game, People Can Fly also developed an expansion pack, ''Battle out of Hell'', made up mostly of [[What Could Have Been|content that was]] [[Dummied Out]] or otherwise scrapped for the original game. It shows, as most players consider the expansion to be a bit of a mixed bag that doesn't quite reach the level of the original game. Since then, the game's publishers have released other standalone expansions developed by fan modders, starting with ''Painkiller: Overdose'' in 2007 (developed by Mindware Studios from the Czech Republic), and following up with ''Painkiller: Resurrection'' in 2009 (by Homegrown Games) and ''Painkiller: Redemption'' in 2011 (by Team EggTooth). [[Running the Asylum|Par for the course, none of them are particularly good.]] ''[[Painkiller: Resurrection]] is an expansion pack for the game.

* [[Airborne Aircraft Carrier]] - The "Air Combat" level from Overdose takes place on one such vessel in what appearstoappears to be an alternate version of [[World War OneI]].

** And on that note, ''Redemption'' is made up ''entirely'' of multiplayermulti-player levels from ''Painkiller'', populated with monsters.

* [[Main/Video Game/Levels/Awesome|Crowning Level of Awesome]] - The game has tons of great levels, ranging from the atmospheric ''Asylum'' level to the gorgeous ''City on Water'', but the stage for the final [[Boss Battle]] is generally agreed upon to be one of the greatest levels in the game, if not one of the greatest levels ever made for any FPS. See [[Hell Is War]] below. {{spoiler|Too bad the fight itself is [[Anticlimax Boss|stupidly easy and short]])}}.

* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]] - The final boss is Lucifer himself.

* [[Die, Chair, Die!]]

* [[Gag Dub]] - by [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]], of the game's intro sequence, which can be seen as a post-credits addonadd-on in his review of ''[[The Witcher]]''

* [[Guns Are Worthless]] - Not for you ([[No Kill Like Overkill|thankfully]]), but for the enemies. If you have armor on, you barely even take [[Scratch Damage]] on most difficulties ([[Death of a Thousand Cuts|it adds up fast, though]]). Then we have the bikers in the first Painkiller: they wield Tommy Guns in level 5-1 and [[Nail 'Em|nail guns]] in 5-2, and [[Goddamn Bats|the nails do MUCH more damage]].

* [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]] - Both subverted and played straight.

* [[Literary Allusion Title]] - [[Judas Priest (Music)|He is the painkiller,]] and [[This Is My Boomstick|this is the painkiller]].

* [[Luck -Based Mission]] - At least one card condition in ''Overdose'' relies on pure, dumb luck: the level ''Animal Farm'' requires the player to collect 160 souls to collect the card. However, there are only <s>162</s> 161 enemies (the last one is glitched out) in the entire level, so the player can only miss a single soul at most - which is already incredibly challenging, but becomes luck-based because some souls can spawn out of reach, and the card condition becomes [[Unwinnable]] if this happens even twice.

* [[Multiple Endings]] - There's three in the original game.

* [[One -Hit Kill]] - Part of the demon morph's powers, except against bosses.

* [[One -Man Army]]

** Doubles as a [[Luck -Based Mission]]: the roller-coaster automatically running over 18 enemies and the other enemies accidentally killing each other can ''very'' easily push your kill count over 88.

* [[PowerupPower-Up Letdown]] - Many tarot cards.

* [[Rule of Cool]] - The game's reason for existing.

* [[Skeletons in Thethe Coat Closet|Skeletons In The Gun Closet]]: The Bonegun and the Spinegun from ''Overdose'' are made entirely out of bones.

* [[Spiritual Successor]] - To older FPS games, specifically ''[[Doom]]'', ''[[Quake (Video Gameseries)|Quake]]'' and ''[[Heretic]]''. The game has also spawned its own set of spiritual successors: ''[[Necro Vision]]'', developed by The Farm 51 whose team includes former People Can Fly designers, and ''[[Dreamkiller]]'', an original shooter from the developers of ''Overdose''. People Can Fly themselves are currently in the employ of [[Epic Games]], and are working hard on [[Bulletstorm (Video Game)|Bulletstorm]].

* [[Standard Sci -Fi Setting]] - In ''Overdose'', the Asteroids level pretty much happily channels typical sci-fi.

* [[Underground Monkey]] - Surprisingly averted. For the first 2/3rds of the game, each new level features a new set of enemy types, with their own unique models and behavior. The last several levels do tend to use repeating enemy types, but even then there's some degree of variety.

* [[Wreaking Havok]] - ''Painkiller'' was one of the first high-profile games to use Havok physics, but unlike some of its more [[Half Life|popular]] [[Halo|contemporaries]], ''Painkiller'' focused more on [[Ragdoll Physics|enemy corpses flying through the air propelled by shotgun blasts]] and giant bosses whose footsteps make arcwaysarchways collapse brick-by-brick.

[[Category:First Person Shooter{{PAGENAME}}]]

[[Category:X BoxXbox]]