Painkiller

At first glance, the prospects for Painkiller do not look promising. It's a first-person shooter published by Dreamcatcher, a company whose previous attempt to break into the action genre was the mediocre (and that's being charitable) Gore. Painkiller was created by People Can Fly, a developer in Warsaw whose claim to fame is the unremarkable X-Com clone called Odium. Throw in some screenshots of skeletons in dungeons being shot with shotguns. List a few bullet points about advanced physics and polygon counts. See the blandly handsome hero's sneering unshaven mug featured on the box cover as if it were an ad for Gillette's new four-bladed razor. Let your eyes glaze over....

But when you actually play the game, you'll realize everything you know about the gaming industry can be wrong. Who'd have thought that this combination would be able to sum up everything we've learned about first-person shooters since DOOM and wrap it into in a tightly wound, intricately crafted, gut busting, giggle inducing, splattering squib of undead guts and shrewd level design and thwacking wooden stakes and clanking doors and scattered explodables and slick water/fire/lighting effects and where-the-hell-is-the-last-secret-area and isn't that end-of-level satanic Gregorian riff one of the sweetest you-can-breathe-now sounds you've ever heard?

Wait, wait. Let's back up.

At the most superficial level, Painkiller is simply an old-school shooter. It's you against an army of demons, one of the oldest stories in the book: they've got the numbers, and you've got the firepower. There's nary a sign of anything resembling a puzzle (with the exception of a few bosses) and you'll never have to wander because there's an arrow at the top of the screen pointing the way. It's a shooter in the purest and most unadulterated sense of the word.

But this only begins to describe Painkiller. Perhaps what's most amazing is that it plays like the work of a seasoned developer with a rare grasp on atmosphere and tone, a rock-solid set of technologies, and sophisticated ideas about game design.

Don't be fooled by the mercifully minimal pretensions towards storytelling. The story is very basic, allowing the narrative to focus on action set pieces in which you're the star, a prime mover with a big gun. Painkiller is a desultory journey through an infernal limbo, both picaresque and picturesque, moving dreamlike from an opera house to a suspension bridge to a military base, for no good reason other than the fact that they make for cool levels.

One cathedral has minarets, another has flying buttresses, and yet another has some sort of funky Babylonian ziggurat vibe. There are demon ninjas, robed monks, and drunken sailors belching poisonous vapors. A ghost soars through the walls of an insane asylum, zombies in gas masks guard a UFO, and skull-headed bikers loiter among Venetian canals. It's as disjointed as it sounds, but the sheer randomness is covered in a consistently creepy and unsettling tone that hasn't been done this well since Monolith's first Blood. In ways, it resembles Serious Sam, but without the bright colors and breezy gameplay. Serious Sam was Looney Tunes. Painkiller is Lovecraft.

Part of what makes Painkiller work so well is how it keeps unveiling little surprises, carefully doling them out over the course of the game. By way of a small example, there's a level near the end with crows flying around. When you kill someone, the crows descend on the corpse and start picking at it. It's a simple trick that makes great use of the ragdoll physics, but like everything else in Painkiller's bag of tricks, it's carefully placed. People Can Fly keeps this going from the simple graveyard opening all the way to a mind-bending timeless finale, which is set in one of the most memorable levels you'll ever see in a first-person shooter. So many games seem to run out of steam long before they're over, but Painkiller keeps up a consistent and energetic sense of discovery throughout.

The technology is also a major part of what makes Painkiller work. It's an original, muscular engine, capable of vast spectacular levels. If you see a tower in the distance, you can rest assured that it's a physical object and that you're probably going to reach the top of it before the level is over. What's more, you'll be able to look down and see the spot where you started. Along the way, the physics do a splendid job of adding detail without drawing focus. You won't find the kind of nuance or minutiae you get in Far Cry or Max Payne, but there is an acceptable compromise between flavor and interactivity. There are enough breakables to keep you busy if you're into that kind of thing, but it doesn't compromise the size and expanse of the levels.

(Editor's note: There have been some reported CD drive issues with the retail version of Painkiller, which we were able to replicate here at GameSpy HQ. Dreamcatcher has released a CD fix for the game, which can be downloaded here. We also experienced some occasional crashes, mostly with multiplayer, but have been unable to replicate the problem.)

The ragdoll bodies are a big selling point, whether they're being hit by crows' beaks or rocket blasts. Bodies jerk and jangle and spin convincingly, splattering and tumbling and spewing blood. And there's even a sense that because these are zombies and demons, it's not really in bad taste to delight in the way the stakes pin them to the wall so they dangle by their heads. At a time when so many first-person shooters are actually about shooting persons -- even if they are criminals or enemy soldiers -- it's nice to get to enjoy some guiltless ragdoll physics.