Rating: 
Summary: Dark, Scary and Action Packed
Review: This is pure non-stop action. You will not be left in a big boring empty level trying to figure your way out or figure out some boring time consuming puzzle. There is no "wait here for half an hour and snipe" either. The weapons are mostly short range, so for most part you get up-close and personal with gruesome looking creatures. Most monsters are armed with melee weapons too, so this makes a great close range fighting scene with bodies flying around and gut splattering action.The graphics are incredible, and extremely detailed. The screenshots don't do justice to this game. The levels look incredibly well polished, and the monsters are just very beautiful and scary looking as they try to impale you. The special effects are very nicely done, for example when you get hit by a monster, it is the best "getting hurt" effect I've seen in a game so far. The physics are incredible. The monsters dangle around realistically as you part your way through a sea of undead creatures. The sounds are great, the ambient noises really add to the scary feel of the game, especially since the levels are already very dark and scary looking. It runs very nicely with all the settings set to the highest on my computer: P4 2.8, 1GB RAM, GeForce4 Ti4600.
Rating: 
Summary: Good game-back to FPS basics
Review: This review is based on the demo.
Painkiller is an addicting and fun, albeit simple shooter. Watching an enemy fly into the air and then crash to the ground is hilarious (a bit demented but hilarious). Don't expect intelligent AI, think back to Doom or Wolfenstein 3D but with incredible graphics and great sound. An onslaught of enemies with plenty of ammo. Great game for those who just want to kill and blow stuff up without the extra sneaking and hiding. No complex puzzles or "move the chair here...run along the top and jump to the banister while blowing a hole in the wall...crouch and you will find the secret weapon" stuff, just all out in your face action.
Rating: 
Summary: If only it worked....
Review: [Boot-Crash,Boot-Crash...] Its the Painkiller Polka! That's what happened after I installed this mess. I knew that I was in trouble when the package contained 3 CDs and there was a message on the box stating: "Whoops, we messed up, use CD #3 to start the game, not #1...Duh." Uh-Oh!! And of course, after installing this game, then downloading the patch (ALREADY, the developers have a patch? Why does'nt Dreamcatcher just finish testing the game before they start selling it??) the darned thing still does'nt work.Worse yet, its an exception that is not handled since there is no error message: Just "Boot" then "Crash"! I know what you are thinking: "Well, you must have a bad system, it works fine on my machine." First, I have over 300 games loaded on my PC - from Microsoft Pinball to Dead Man's Hand - and they all work. I have the latest version of DirectX loaded and my video card is an 128 MB ATI 9000 series, my sound card is an Audigy 2 and my computer has a Gig of RAM and it is a P4 2.5 Ghz. But that really is'nt the point. I expect a complete game when I plunk down some serious $$ for one; not some patched-up mess. I should'nt have to rebuild my entire PC to run this game when over 300 others (including games released in the same month as "Painkiller") work perfectly. This is just a sloppily slapped-together piece of code. Don't waste your time on it until they fix ALL the bugs.
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