| Painkiller: Hell Wars - Xbox Posted: 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. |
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