 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | People Can Fly |
| Publisher: | DreamCatcher Studios | |
| Genre: | FPS | |
| ESRB: | Mature | |
| # Of Players: | 1-8 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Dolby Digital 5.1, Xbox Live (online play) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
"Boo!"
Did that scare you? No, well, neither will Painkiller: Hell Wars. Then again, I’m not entirely sure this game is supposed to. I mean, it is a first-person shooter, so it has that oh-my-god-I-can’t-see-what’s-behind-me dynamic going for it, then it has monsters, and of course it is revolving around the epic struggle of Heaven and Hell, so there’s that. But somehow this game manages to squander almost all of the potential it did have - for cheap thrills, at least a few hours of FPS fun, or anything else – and, instead, finishing this game left me feeling like I had just gotten off a ride at Disney World. In fact, that may actually be scarier...you know, seeing as how people rarely fall to their death while playing video games. Of course, that isn’t to say this Xbox game isn’t without peril, as there is a distinct possibility you may die of boredom before anything really good happens.
As I mentioned above, Painkiller revolves around the war between Heaven and Hell (hence the title, Hell Wars), with your character stuck right in the middle. The game begins with a cutscene showing he and his wife driving down a rainy stretch of road, ogling one another and holding hands when – SMACK! – they are hit head-on by a truck. Next thing you know, you’re battling with demons and arguing with God’s assistant manager about why you aren’t in Heaven with your wife. Now, it seems to me that had he just kept his eyes on the road, Daniel (our hero) wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place and he and his wife would still be alive, but he doesn’t see it that way and continues to bitch about it for the rest of the game (seriously, this guy is like Episode IV Luke Skywalker whiny, so get used to it). In any event, God has seemingly decided him un-pure and deemed that he shall wash himself clean in the blood of His enemies. So there you have it, the story is certainly not going to win any awards, but it is at least functional and it serves to introduce the motley crew of characters and enemies.
Unfortunately, in a game such as this, that could hardly be considered a compliment. Seriously, the first handful of characters introduced were really the only thing I could stand in Painkiller. Apart from Daniel, his wife, and a pushy underling from Heaven, you’ll eventually join forces with the ever-knowledgeable Eve – yes, the Eve, a twist in the story that was all too apparent from the fact that she was wondering around topless (covered discreetly by hair, that is) – and the token "good demon" who looks like a paunchy and retired version of Etrigan (from DC Comic’s Demon). Barely bearable as the story and its characters alone are, the latter serving only to swoon over Daniel’s fighting skills and mastery of weapons (and pump up the player’s ego), things certainly take a much sharper turn for the worse once you calculate in this game’s enemies.
Goofy. No, not the Disney character, I mean the adjective. Remember that word. This may the first time you will read that in this review, but I assure you, it will not be the last. More often than not, when it comes to the monsters in Painkiller: Hell Wars that is the one word I will use to describe them. For the most part, many of the characters simply look like they are The Suffering rejects, but you also get such cheesy characters as the beefed-up, mercenary-like Maso Commando and the rowdy, leather-clad and presumably dead Hell Bikers, which as you might have guessed are dead biker gang members. Early on, though, things aren’t nearly so bad, though they are pulled from your standard video game rogues gallery: skeletons, ghouls, warlocks, etc. Those characters are even a bit fun to fight, with the neat opportunity to shoot the axe out of one enemy’s hand for a quick kill. And, now we come to the bosses. On a simple good or bad scale, it is hard to say exactly where the bosses sit. On the one hand, they are sometimes just as goofy as the normal enemies – take, for example, the some five story tall Frankenstein monster cleverly called (...wait for it...) Necrogiant – but, on the other hand...the bosses are five stories tall! Really, that is probably an understatement, because the bosses are just huge, towering over you and making you feel (needlessly) quite helpless.
Unfortunately, it probably won’t be long into your Painkiller voyage before you realize that the most original monsters (that is to say, the goofy ones) are the ones designed specifically for the levels in the game. You see, for each new location, there are three or four new enemies to face. After that, with the exception of a select few, you usually won’t encounter them again...of course, that is probably because the chapters seem to have no common link between them, no natural progression from one to the next. Each distinct part of the game is broken up into a handful of chapters and, within each, a handful of levels. Depending on what difficulty setting you are playing on, you may not get to play all the levels that are available, so there is an interesting bit of replay value even if the levels aren’t exactly the most original in the history of videogames. However, despite being run-of-the-mill and lacking any sort of correlation, it is hard to put the levels on a simple good or bad scale because, like the bosses, the levels are also insanely huge as well. For a first-person shooter, the areas are surprisingly wide open, with indoor and outdoor environments, and with the two interacting with one another quite often. In those respect, it sometimes makes Painkiller a treat to play and makes me hope that more games will take a cue...not from the whole game, mind you, just a few aspects of it.
Posted: 2006-09-01 18:35:36 PST