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Final gasp from the infernal pit

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: July 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Talk about an unlikely release! When the Xbox port of the hellbound PC FPS Painkiller was announced 57 years ago (seems like that long!), it caused quite a bit of excitement. The initial enthusiasm eventually faded due to delay after delay, and with the arrival of the new wave of consoles, there were even rumblings that the Xbox version would be scrapped in favor of next-gen incarnations.

But things often happen unexpectedly. Seemingly out of nowhere, Painkiller: Hell Wars has been belched forth from the underworld, and even though the timing is poor and the quality is rough, there can't be a better way to bid farewell to the black monolith of the Xbox, the machine that made console FPSes a genre to pay attention to.

Painkiller: Hell Wars begins with a gripping opening scene, in which CGI actors display heights of emotion never before seen.....yeah right. Your character dies and goes to Hell, and someone tells you to "kill everything that moves and destroy Hell's generals." Sign the pact, and let's get to business already!

You're cast headlong into a series of themed levels, from a graveyard to a cathedral and beyond, with waves of enemies trying to take you out. Kill em before they kill you, soldier - that's the long and short of it, the beginning and end, the reason for everything. Luckily, you've got some fun weapons to use, from the Pin-Em-To-The-Wall stake gun to the Spinning-Blade-Of-Death painkiller, and lots of enemies to use them on. AI is nonexistent, with the zombies, skeletons, wraiths, hellhounds, and whatever charging at you mindlessly. Graphical detail and artistry aren't amazing (although the massive bosses are cool, and there are many enemy types), but the amount of action onscreen is always impressive, and the game moves at a breakneck pace.

Developer People Can Fly has implemented some gameplay details that more FPSes should contain. PK:HW is basically a hybrid of Doom, Castle Wolfenstein, and Serious Sam. This means you have the hell-themed levels and enemies of Doom, the hidden secrets of Wolfenstein, and the hordes of enemies of Serious Sam. Quite an intoxicating and effective combination! The game constantly keeps track of your score and collected gold, and will even tell you if you are missing any secrets in each level. Since you have to kill all enemies to advance, you're allowed the opportunity to explore once they're all dead, and once you're satisfied, you enter the portal leading to the next stage. Kind of nice to have the choice.

Breaking items gets you gold, and gold lets you power up Tarot cards, which give you various useful power-ups. These aren't necessary to finish the game, but they can make things easier, and give those gaming completists out there plenty of stuff to hunt for.

In addition, there are multiple difficulty levels, with some areas only accessible on the higher ones, and there are more secrets on the tougher ones as well. All this means there's some attractive replay value here, moreso than most entries in the genre.

Speaking of replay, PK packs some serious multiplayer action as well, via system link or over XB Live. Multiplayer was a highlight of the PC version, and it works just as well here, although split-screen and campaign co-op would have been awesome additions.

Painkiller: Hell Wars seems like a rushed release, with entire levels being left out from the PC version, along with rough graphics, minimal music, limited multiplayer options, and a general lack of atmosphere. However, it's available at a low price point, has plenty of gameplay, and let's admit it, chewing through crowds of demons with a spinning, wrist-mounted blade is just fun as.....errr....hell.

Thanks are due to People Can Fly and Dreamcatcher, because they really didn't have to release this tite, but since it had been in development for so long, they probably figured they owed it to everyone who'd been looking forward to it. Nice to see a developer and publisher pay attention to the fans in this period of scant new releases!

Recommendation: if you are a FPS fan who's played Halo to death and is waiting for the holiday storm of new titles to hit, do yourself a favor and pick up Painkiller: Hell Wars. It's an enjoyable demonic ride, and it'll remind you just how far console first-person shooters have come during the Xbox's life-cycle.

Another game where you fight your way through Hell

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I picked this up because I usually enjoy first person shooter games. I didn't think this would top my favorite games like, Half Life, Marathon, or Halo, but I figured it had potential for being time well spent. I was fairly right, but this version for the Xbox can be a little twitchy at times. I'll give a basic overview first then go over what glitches I came across.

First off, let me say that if you are a Doom/Doom II fan, then you will absolutely enjoy playing this game. That game's basic formula is followed almost to a T, but without it starting out on Mars. You play as Daniel Gardner, a man who died in a tragic accident, with wife Catherine. Anyway, she went to Heaven and he ended up going someplace else. It's not exactly Hell, but it's a terrifying place between the two realms, I'll say Purgatory for now. It's a plane of existence where both angels and demons can walk and basically Lucifer is planning on mounting a major army to storm Heaven. Naturally "God" doesn't want this to happen, so you meet with an emissary of "God" and he tells you that you can see your wife again if you take out the four generals that Hell has maneuvered into place for the assault. (Obvious boss battles coming up, I know). Anyway, this emissaries name is Sammael, something I found very interesting. When you read about demonology or angelology you will find that Sammael's name is not associated with the Angelic host... he's in fact a demon, a very high ranking one actually. I don't know if this is foreshadowing by the developers, or if they looked through a book that showed him as being in the heavenly host, either way I know for a fact Sammael's name has been heavily demonized since the onset of that monotheistic religion. Anyway, Daniel takes the offer to run through this Purgatory styled place and kill the four generals. Overall the storyline is a little weak and you end up running into Eve in your travels and she helps you navigate your way through the land. The cinematic sequences that tell you all this are kind of poor from my perspective. Honestly they should have used the game engine to deal with the cinematics, instead they used some sort of 3D animation that rendered the characters super smooth and fake looking. I'm not sure why they decided to go with this, ah well, it wasn't horrible at least.

So now that you have your orders it's up to you to stop them and fight through five levels of, what I would say is an absolute killing spree. If you like fighting lots of monsters this game is definitely for you. The game is split up into five levels with five chapters in each level. I have to admit that I loved the maps and level design. I thought they were by far the best part of the game. The levels are usually pretty huge, unfortunately there are some areas that I got lost, but that's for another reason. Anyway, if you like those games where you get to search around for stuff you'll like this game as well. In each level there are secret areas and holy artifacts for you to find. I didn't really sit down and try to find everything, but I stumbled upon a few here and there. If you're up for a serious challenge then you'll love searching for all these items. Most people will be more focused on killing all the monsters though. You do fight hordes of enemies and the monster designs were pretty cool. In one sequence you end up fighting against Templar knights and then in another you're in a World War I scenario. As you can see you meet all kinds of characters on your travels through Purgatory and Hell. I did like the weapons you get to use, but one thing I didn't like was that scrolling through the weapons was kind of annoying. I suppose they were trying to solve the problem of using it on the Xbox, so you just use the D-pad, but you can only queue up two weapons at a time, as well as the standard Painkiller weapon which is always equipped. Last time I checked there were four buttons to choose from and this only accounts for three. I would have much preferred to be able to choose through four different weapons than just three.

I guess this leads me to the section where I should complain about what I didn't like. One thing that was really frustrating was that in order to get on to the next section you basically have to kill all the enemies. Sounds like no problem right? Wrong, sometimes what will happen is an enemy is in some obscure location. Frequently this is on a roof very far from your current location. I know that sounds clever and makes the game more challenging, but after a while it really did get annoying, especially during level four when it kept being the way to move on to the next section. Not to mention, sometimes there are guys in windows and the windows aren't very big so it's really hard to see. Now I don't know how it is for the PC version, but the Xbox version lagged a little bit in places (though I suspect this would be more about what kind of PC specs you have). The worst part was when your direction arrow stops moving. At this point I have no idea where to go sometimes, because the maps are so huge. I'm very glad they included that compass like thing in the HUD to help you navigate where to go next, but when it doesn't work you just end up running around aimlessly after you've killed everyone.

Overall I thought this game was quite fun. It would've been way better with a much more solid story line, but in the end I didn't feel like I was wasting my time or anything playing this game. Some of the boss battles can get kind of confusing at first, but most people should be able to figure them out (hint: most bosses don't die just by shooting them). One thing people should note is that this game IS different from the PC version. Not in a huge way, but Chapter five has distinctly different chapters. Such as there's an Orphanage chapter and that's not in the PC. I found this out when I was horribly lost someplace and looked for FAQ's online. (I did physically beat the game eventually though.) This just means I'm going to probably go out and get the PC version to see what's different and what I like more. Being the avid PC gamer I am, I suspect I'll like the PC version more. The game ends on a sort of cliffhanger note where you just know there will be a follow-up game. This closing cinematic was by far the best in the whole game. The level designs are wonderful and fun, but overall I don't see this particular gaming franchise being huge in the future, it certainly can't compete with the already classic Doom or what Half Life 2 is doing at the moment. So if you're bored and itching to play a decent, but different, first person shooter I would say give this one a whirl for a while.

PAINKILLER LITE VERSION

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: October 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I PLAY THIS GAME I THE PC AND IT'S LOOKS A BIT DIFFERENT IN THE XBOX, IS THE FEELING THAT THE SPACE AND WORLD GET SMALLER, AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT WHIRLWIND THING EVERY END OF LEVEL, IS A BIT ANNOYING.

THE GAME IS COOL BUT THE XBOX HAD THE ENOUGH POWER TO PORT THIS GAME FROM THE PC WITHOUT THE LOSS OF AMBIENT.

Good enough, Serious Sam goes to Hell

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: August 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is allright it has a few graphical hiccups, but is mildly entertaining it trully is just like Serious Sam except being set in hell or purgatory, whatever.

Blah...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just OK. At best. I expected more, but I guess it makes sense they were in no hurry to get this popular title onto Xbox. Because it has little to offer. Graphics are no big deal. Fun factor is moderate to low. Not much originality or inspiration here either in the design, gameplay or story. But, I want to collect Xbox games, since there will be no new stuff for the old system. I'll probably never bother to finish this game.

Great and fast first person shooter

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game awhile back and wanted a second one for linking two Xbox's together for multiplayer.I wanted the fastest moving one i could think of,having played almost all of them on xbox and xbox 360.It's faster online than any on the 360.The controls are spot on.The game itself is like Quake meets Serious sam.Single player game is good as well but i don't want to spoil it for first time players.It's a shame that the game is not backward playable on the 360.However if you have an older xbox and you like a fast moving fps,i recommend this game highly.

good mindless fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

this game is great for when you dont feel like thinking, it's a straightforward shooter, sure there are some unlockables but the best part is is that its just nonstop action.

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