Painkiller Black edition is a First Person Shooter following the journey of a man named Daniel who has been sent to purgatory after causing a fatal car crash. His wife met her end in that incident as well, though in her case she was sent to heaven. With that knowledge, an angel offers Daniel a chance at forgiveness if he can manage to take down four of Lucifer’s generals before they can launch an attack. It is a pretty interesting set-up, but in truth, the story is more like window dressing in between long stretches of nothing but uninterrupted brutal fights against the forces of hell. And what fights they will be as you bunny hop around the levels at break-neck speeds and face seemingly impossible odds using a creative arsenal of weapons.
One thing you will definitely want to do if you have any experience with the genre whatsoever is immediately put the difficulty at Nightmare. Anything lower and it becomes so easy that it becomes darn near boring as you effortlessly barrel your way through everything that stands in your way. I do not mean for that statement to sound elitist, it is just a warning of how your experience will play out and there is no way to change the difficulty again without restarting the entire game. On top of that, some rather awesome levels will be locked off to you. If a power fantasy is more your cup of tea however, you won’t truly be missing out on anything aside from a few areas and would be a decent way to unwind.
Starting off, you have nothing aside from your iconic weapon called the painkiller. It is a spinning bladed object with an alt-fire that allows you to fire it at an enemy. As cool as it sounds, it has very little in the way of range since Daniel holds it so close to himself that he could probably trim his nose hairs if he looks down. You won’t be long before you get a more worthwhile weapon in the form of a shotgun that not only devastates at close range, but has an extremely powerful alt-fire that freezes a foe and allows you to shatter him in a single hit. This shotgun combined with the over the top physics that sees enemies flying several feet through the air after a well-placed blast ensures that you quickly discover what this game is all about, sheer simple fun.
The random none connected levels you travel through, fighting ninjas with a gun that shows lightning, an angel giving you demonic powers which Daniel doesn’t take as even a bit suspicious, it’s all done in the name of making a fun game. It really shows that the story and the characters in it were made after everything else. Daniel doesn’t even talk during levels, only during one of those strangely lengthy cut-scenes that occur after beating one of the five episodes on offer. In the levels themselves, you’ll always know exactly where to go as you always have a pointer showing you the way to the next mob of enemies that need a good killing. The game is kind enough to both refill all your health as well save your game right before every encounter, making it so even if you make a dumb mistake like shooting a rocket at an enemy a few feet away, you’ll never really lose more than a few minutes of time from where you bit the dust.
In total, you will have access to five guns. It may not sound like much but considering each has an alt-fire that uses there own ammo, you effectively have double that. There is no one defacto gun that you will stick with all throughout, each and every one of them has there uses. Stubbornly trying to use say a shotgun for everything is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Sure you can eventually jam it in with a great deal of force and persistence, though you will be expanding far more time & effort than you should. With a horde of other deadly enemies always at your heels, it becomes a fine dance of switching between all the tools at your disposal and learning what they, as well as your foes, are capable of. Simple enough with your limited selection of weapons, though studying the forces in your opposition is a whole different story. There is a truly impressive variety within them and as soon as you are getting the handle on one enemy type, two new ones will take their place.
There are very few levels that do not introduce at least one new foe. This leaves you never knowing what kind of deadly creature you may face at any given moment and a sense of adrenaline as you quickly adapt to its unique combat style. The one thing they all have in common is that you will always have to be in the defensive against them. Standing your ground is suicide and only weaving through their attacks to lay some hurt of your own upon them will see you come out victorious. You always run the risk of being swarmed, though speeding around the battlefield will soon become second-nature, along with all the other things you have to worry about aside from dodging lowly melee based enemies. Your default movement speed is fast, but you will need to learn how to bunnyhop, especially as the game progresses.
For those not familiar with the term bunny hopping, it is essentially jumping again right before you land in order to keep your speed momentum. Get the timing just right with successive jumps and you can reach absurd speeds to avoid anything heading your way, or shotgun blast an entire horde of enemies before they even know what happened as you zoom by. Later on, you will face enemies such as full sized tanks and this style of movement is your only shot at survival. There is nothing quite like effortlessly dodging out of the way of a tank shell fired where you stood mere moments ago and raining your own death upon it. Even a one-sided fight against enemies of flesh and blood is a ton of fun as they are torn apart by your insane weaponry and the physics kicking in as corpses fly about the place. The game-play is absolutely brilliant, with few even to this day being able to hold a candle against Painkiller.
It takes skill to use any of your weapons to its full extent. The rocket launcher’s projectile moves very slowly, so you have to predict where an enemy will be instead of where he is currently at. Your Stakegun that serves as your long-range weapon has an arc you have to take into account as you target a foe from a distance. And even the shotgun which is hit-scan requires you to make your way up close and personal to a foe that is just as eager to kill you. Once again, each have an alt-fire that completely changes how you can use it. Your options at any one time are plentiful and it all comes down to quick decision making as much as simple reflexes. An interesting gimmick is that your enemies drop souls when they are killed. Consuming a soul by stepping over it will not only heal a bit of your health, but will also temporarily turn you into a demon once you get 66 of them. In your demon form, the world turns black & white and you will be able to one-shot just about anything with blasts of energy.
I have two key issues with the way the soul mechanic is implemented. First off is that the enemies take far too long to disintegrate and drop their souls, causing you to deal with other things then backtrack to their corpse’s location. The second is how friggin fast they disappear, leaving you feeling a bit cheated as you see them disappear just before you can reach them again. It would be far less of a hassle if enemies dropped souls immediately instead of having to kite around their bodies until they do so. This wouldn’t even break the balance considering that you turn into a demon immediately after picking up 66 souls, regardless if there are any foes left. It is hardly game-breaking, though it did cause me to not even bother with picking them up and ignoring the whole system after a while.
Scattered around the areas are plenty of secrets and things to break. Other than the satisfaction of smashing things, you will also receive a nice chunk of gold currency for your efforts. Secrets typically contain ammo, armor, and collectibles to find. After every single stage, all your ammo and armor will be gone so keeping a keen eye for anything out of the usual will go a long way towards keeping you well stocked for your next encounter. This is where another unique feature comes into play, every level will have a special requirement to unlock a tarot card. The only way to know what that objective is requires you to first finish the level before it tells you, annoyingly enough. You can also simply look it up online these days, but either way, having these cards in your possession can be invaluable, so it is worth going out of your way for.
Unlocking tarots usually involves something simple like beating a level in a certain amount of time, killing all enemies or finding every secret. In exchange, you can equip whatever card you unlock from the main menu to use on your next mission. They fall into either the passive Silver category in where their effects are always on and a Gold one where you can only use them a certain amount of times. Stuff like being invulnerable for a short while, causing four times the amount of damage, and receiving twice the amount of ammo to name but a few powers at your command. This great game-altering power comes at a price however. You will have to pay cold, hard cash every time you want to equip them so it would be wise to only use them when in need. It is an interesting way to increase replay value and is quite the shame that you can’t increase the difficulty without losing them.
At the end of every episode, there will be a boss you will need to defeat. They are large, hulking beasts and aside from the first few, all require more than mindless shooting to actually take down. Overall, all of them are rather hit or miss as to whether they are enjoyable to fight. When it hits, you will have a blast facing off against an incredibly deadly foe. And when it doesn’t, you’ll be wondering if that was all he had after so much hype, as was the case with the final boss. Luckily for us, that isn’t the end of it since this Black version also features the Battle out of Hell expansion pack. It picks off right after the main campaign ends and has a set of ten levels offer a far greater challenge, even on lower difficulties. Not only that, it also kicks things up to 11 with the new enemies including dead orphans, killer flame breathing clowns, and generally more bombastic set-pieces.
This expansion pack starts off really strong with you having nothing aside from your painkiller as you explore a spooky mansion full of dead orphans and movie references. In a later level, you find yourself fighting through Stalingrad with the Soviet anthem blasting all throughout, which is hilarious until you discover just how much manpower they have at their disposal. There are so many memorable moments that it turned it felt like playing Pokemon Snap for me after taking so many screenshots of all the cool things happening throughout. Sadly after the midway point, it starts offering up a few bad levels that go against what makes the game fun. That includes platforming that often times feature an insta-kill pit, staying glued in one location while you are railroaded across the level, and one maddening stage which has you climbing on ladder after ladder. With how finicky it is climbing those bloody things, alongside my lack of first-person platforming skills, this combination killed me far more than any giant mechanical spider ever could.
It also offers up two new weapons with us to play with, each fitting brilliantly into our previous arsenal. The first one you’ll find is a semi-automatic machine gun with its alt-fire being a flamethrower. Like some other weapons, it also has a hidden function when you combine the alt fire with the primary one. Then you finally have a scoped death dealer with the new nail gun. It is also semi-automatic firing five projectiles at once, though it is very accurate which will be a godsend for those that couldn’t get a handle on using the original Stakegun. Its alt-fire sends a cluster of grenades bouncing ahead of you and when shot into a group will produce pleasing results. Well pleasing for you that is, I imagine that even zombies won’t be all too happy with their new life as a coat of red goo plastered on the wall. The new weapons are no doubt quite handy and you will still receive plenty of ammo for your old guns, making their addition feel natural instead of being forced to use them.
The graphics have aged rather well barring the cut-scenes. This is largely thanks to the amazing level architecture on display here. There are some seriously stunning vistas and when it wants to get creepy, it pulls that off just as well. With the developers not caring in the slightest as to explaining how you went from being in a beautiful opera house to suddenly being in a haunted asylum facing creatures clinging from the ceiling, they make full use of their ability to toss you into unique locations. All told, it took me just under a dozen hours to complete the main campaign and the expansion pack. I just put the game down to write this review and I’m already itching to tackle it again on a higher difficulty.
As for the multiplayer, I’m sad to report that it is completely dead and I’ve never had the chance to experience it, so no opinion there. It was a good mode according to the people I asked and what I’ve heard back in 2004. This title is so old that it still uses the Gamespy matchmaking service and annoyingly enough, it will ask you to install it every time you boot the game up. Simply delete the folder where Gamespy is in and you’ll be free from that. When all is said and done, Painkiller Black is a must play title for fans of old-school shooters. Few games can match it’s dedication to variety for each and every level, with even fewer being able to match its fine-tuned, fast-paced gameplay. From people that simply want to blow apart countless enemies without a care in the world to those that like always being one step away from possible death, Painkiller is a loving crafted title you would do well to have in your collection.
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