‘Painkiller Overdose’ a dull, mindless shooter
Publisher: Dreamcatcher
Reviewer’s Rating: 1 stars out of 4
Genre: Shooter
Platform: PC
Rating: M (Mature )
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“Painkiller Overdose” is a strict run-and-gun shooter in which you play as the tortured son of Heaven and Hell, Belial the Prince of Hate. The word hate is used repeatedly in the opening cinematic, just to make sure that you hate everything in the game. Well, I think it worked in the wrong way.
While the game’s plot is nothing beyond a demented child’s storybook tale, the game play isn’t much better than id Software’s “Doom” game. If it moves, you shoot it. If it looks like a container, you shoot it. Your brain might thank you for the vacation while playing this game.
Running around the bland areas of each map, you must not only kill anything that moves, but also collect the souls of the creatures you’ve killed. Doing this will replenish your health pool, as well as charge up your “super” killing spree mode. Once you’ve harvested enough souls you enter a ruthless, short-duration killing mode in which everything dies in pretty much one hit as you move faster and have a distorted and blurred view, as if you’ve had far too much liquor.
After clearing each room, which are all basically the same shape for a large portion of the game, square, a door or passageway is revealed where you autosave your progress. While this is a common method used in many shooter games, they usually aren’t blatantly marked. With “Overdose” you get a giant red pentagram, as if it makes saving the game that much ‘cooler.’
There is spoken dialogue throughout the game from you, Belial, as well as the monsters, ninjas and other various demons of destruction. Belial tends to make small quips and puns regarding the destruction he (you) causes. With only a handful of phrases to say, I got tired of him saying the same things over and over again. “I love the smell of fresh souls in the morning!” is just not funny after about the fourth time hearing it.
While “Painkiller Overdose” does use a fast-moving game engine for its graphics, the load times are grueling. Transitions between levels take far too long for a game with such simple mechanics. Also, there is a Quicksave and Quickload function, but it doesn’t load the Quicksave slot any faster than loading the entire level again. In most other games, the Quickload function is actually quick.
Overall, the game just didn’t do it for me. Sporting little to no brain functions to progress through the game, cheesy humor coming from Belial, the Prince of Hate, and repetitious levels that are mostly just big squares, the game is dull. I enjoy several other games that are in the category ‘mindless,’ but “Painkiller Overdose” is about 10 years too late.
