What a GREAT game. Takes time to master, but the sheer satisfaction of say, getting 100% secrets in Docks (for a trick-impaired nanny like me), or beating the bojangles out of Thor's arse is just tops.

Diving right into the mission packs, and then back to get that pesky secret at the top of the pillar...

Lots of people should SERIOUSLY think about this one, while designing their next Interactive Movie on Rails Type Game...

Whatta romp! 

I had a lot of fun with this one. Weapons are excellent, enemies are good and some of the bosses are great, although some are just confusing. 

I played Painkiller to, is in fact a nice game but not as fun as Quake...

Seams like SeriousSam all strait forward!!!

nice to relax with pkammo :) and pkweapons 

I played Painkiller to, is in fact a nice game but not as fun as Quake...

Seams like SeriousSam all strait forward!!!

nice to relax with pkammo :) and pkweapons

cheater ;)

its a fun game, but become bored after awhile 

Had a lot of promise, and a very impressive engine. But doesn't have the creative layouts of classic Doom or Quake, nor the monster design. (Hell, Serious Sam has it blown out of the water on that front as well). And I enjoy horde fights a lot, but PK had no variety :(

It has lots of monsters, but they are mostly just humanoids that melee, or humanoids that throw projectiles. No archvile, no Fiend, no Revenant etc etc etc. Very boring imo.

I did have a lot of fun playing it, but mostly just cheating with excessive use of PKhaste etc. Playing the game properly was mostly too easy because the enemies just aren't threatening enough and once bunny hopping you move so fast. The only level I had real trouble with was Factory and Forest (although it's mainly due to unlocking all the gold cards and then knowing when to abuse them in each level :P )

I actually enjoyed the complete randomness of the environments. Was refreshing to play something that was so video-gamey... like an FPS megaman in that regard :P 

When they did the coop attack stuff - like one that would pick another up and use him as a human shield.

I know there were other instances of such, but can't remember them.

The levels were mostly linked boxes which was a shame, but there were the odd instance of more intelligent labyrinthine designs, which were great. 

...Monsters are not the greatest for sure, stranger, more twisted creatures are surely missed, but I appreciate nevertheless the approach PCF had to the matter: most of them creatures are level specific, and designed to convey a certain kind of atmosphere depending on the environment. From this point of view Painkiller sometimes feel like a series of minigames. And that is nice, imo.

Level design is sometimes too straightforward and simplistic, true. But there are places with a very strong sense of anguish and fear.
Levels are not very consequential,coerence is completely flushed down the toilet, but some of these scenarios are really, really awe inspiring.

Gameplay, well, it's just right for me... Not really hard, granted, but dynamic and satisfying, especially in the boss areas(Not Lucifer!).

Fast bunnyhopping, I found it didactic. I learned some tricks that can be easily replicated in Quake, taking into account the very different physics of the two. I alway shated jumping puzzles, 'cause they make me nervous, but being forced to nail a trick to get the tarots somehow motivated me much more than the simple discovery of a secret (and Painkiller has got some 40 seconds quickloads).

Dunno, Quake is and always will be the best FPS ever, but I found P higly enjoyable in my 2nd pass through, much more than the 1st time around.

And, I found out Trinca's a cheater... That's enough goodness... ;) 

"most of them creatures are level specific"
Painkiller really is the expression of what John Romero was going for with Daikatana, ie recycling as little content as possible. All it needs is for the weapons to be level specific and it'd be there :)

Its a nice idea but ultimately lends little to gameplay, and I'd rather they used the resources on more unique enemies they repeatedly used.

One of the reasons I think the forest level is the best is that it uses more than two enemy types per spawn. 

it's a shame that that was a secret level. 

It' s just not available at lower skill levels...

@ZQF: True, gameplay could have been more varied, but some levels have just great atmosphere.Town, for instance, really hits the bullseye, imo. All the lepers and witches in a decaying medieval town convey a perfect sense of place.
PCF research in how horror is perceived in different cultures is put to good use here, I think, and it's a leading motive of the whole game. I like it.

But, I got your point, it all boils down to personal taste, really, and maybe it's just a moment, even for me, but at presente I'm enjoying it greatly... 

Oh don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, I played through it enough times to see everything :)

It's just a shame I feel it could have been so much more. And missed potential does aggravate me a lot :P 

graphics, textures and construction is awesome!!!

game play get bored after a wile, is just kill kill kill 

Is lack of build tools.

Or did I miss something? 

iirc some were released but they were just placing the entities and such. All the geometry and lighting was made in Maya, and sod that :P

I did try making a ut2k4 level entirely in max once, out of giant meshes. And it was pretty cool, especially baking these lovely lightmaps. But the texturing drove me up the wall and I quickly gave up. I'm not an environment artist, I'm a level designer etc etc! 

prefabs could have been made from the Maya sources though. But then you'd need the lighting tools etc. 

It' s just not available at lower skill levels...

that's probably it then, i think i only played at normal skill level. i remember having to cheat to be able to get to that level or something which is why i thought it was a secret. 

Painkiller is set up so that to complete the game (getting 24 black tarots) you have to play through it at least twice, if you want to make it easier on your poor self.

In fact, if you play any skill lower than Nightmare (that, unlike Quake, is not the hardest) you only get 22 levels, the 23rd, Prison, being available only from NM up and the 24th, Forest, only in Trauma (the hardest skill level).

You can find a pretty complete rundown of how the game works here http://painkiller.maledicted.net/ if you're interested.

You probably used the Powermad mod to get to Forest, it does a lot of nice things, like allowing quicksaves in Trauma... 

Actually thinking about it the main reason forest was so hard was because I was going for its card unlock. The requirement is to use no tarot, which means no gold card usage (ouch) and no silver cards equipped.

Trauma is also pretty nasty. No souls so no health from them, and no demon morph, and no healing at checkpoints. In most levels bunny hopping means you avoid most damage but forest is too compact and has so many monsters it's hard to avoid it all :) It took me a while to crack it in the end. The checkpoint area halfway through it being particularly nasty if I recall... 

i just remembered, i absolutely loved the mine level in booh. you start at the bottom of this huge mine shaft and work your way up the sides.
i remember when i got near the top, thinking 'well, too bad this map is almost over'.
then you actually get to move out of the mine shaft into a bit of a quarry area at the top. i remember it felt really cool that there's seemed almost like an 'extra' area up there, even though it was part of the normal map progression. 

It's a game worth playing just to see the variety and quality of the settings. I don't like the fact that some levels are locked out based upon your skill selection. Is there an easy cheat so they can all be played on Normal?

I did find installs and patches to be horrendously buggy and I had to struggle to get the original to play after installing a mission pack. That seems lame. Also, when a game needs that many patches - it says a lot about their attitude about quality control.

Gameplay is very limited but the demon mode you get after collecting enough souls is good violentfun. Also, fliffing zombies with the spear gun is neat and the physics were good. 

...is the same as flipping. The zombie's center of gravity was at it's Adam's apple. Headshots flipped them. 

As for the buggy installs, they're horrible, I had the original one and it was a Nightmare, I recently bought a magazine bundle with the complete Black Edition+Overdose and, while not perfect, installs have worked fairly well...

Trauma mode is indeed nasty, and I never had considered how much scarce, if any, health caches can be used to make a game really hard.

I think that the Powermad mod gives you the opportunity to play the whole game in any skill you choose, not sure though... 

Yea Powermad is great. Also adds an otherwise unavailable noclip cheat iirc, which is nice for taking screenshots :)

Have to say I never had any trouble installing or playing it, always felt like a very solid game to me. Perhaps I was just really lucky :E

And the Mine level was pretty awesome. Huge like the Docks level but vertical. 

i was lucky i guess, as i didn't have any problems installing nor do i remember very many (if any?) crashes while playing.

for me, the only negatives were the repetitive and uninspired gameplay and some maps looked good enough to make you forget you were basically just fighting one horde after another in a locked room. 

Was called gravel pit? Great level, although the pirate skeleton enemies were a bit stupid, thematically.

Forest was good, but plague village was better - those X's on the doors and undead were great.

I remember the Venice level when the sun rose towards the end. The tower of babel as well, had a cool endboss and nice vibe.