Intense gameplay with heavy metal music playing in the background.
Nice graphics and sound effects.
Overuse of the following - you enter a room, the door behind you slams shut behind you and a large number of enemies appear.

This is a simple shooter done right.. it doesn't try to bog down the gameplay with needless ties to situational realism or plot lines. No need for enemy AI or anything. Just hordes of zombie evil demons swarming from all directions to kill you. Not only are the standard weapons great, the base weapon that never runs out (called the Painkiller) is one of the best weapons in shooter history. This game is a one trick pony that does what it does well and doesn't try to do more (and risk failing, as so many other games have done and will continue to do).

Also, it runs great in Crossover (lets Intel Macs run Windows software without Windows) once you apply the update patches. Apparently the demos and later editions run without needing version updates.

Painkiller is a return to what matters most: the simple act of shooting hideous things.

The game is divided into discrete levels that are related only by a loose-fitting story. The levels are carefully laid out and are built to be played on, rather that admired. It is a triumph of level design that they're so varied.

You only get five guns, but the weapons have multiple firing modes, not one of them useless or redundant. And although we've seen a million rocket launchers and machine guns, Painkiller brings some inventive new toys to the table. A gun that fires wooden stakes and a magical grappling hook that can sprout blades seem designed not just for their visceral appeal, but also to show off the game's superb rag-doll physics.

Although Painkiller is streamlined, it is not shallow; there are deeper layers. As you kill monsters, you can collect their souls to occasionally trigger a demonic "god mode". Each level has a bonus goal that if met, unlocks a tarot card with a special power that tweaks the game rules or fires off a spell.

You like good shooters? Play this game, damn it!

I believe that playing Painkiller might be likened to eating an anchovy pizza--for a person who loves pizza but hates anchovies. The bulk of the game is very good and fun to play, but the parts that aren't fun are just plain annoying.

Painkiller has great graphics and very good level design. If you lob a grenade at a wagon, for instance, that wagon will fly apart in a very realistic fashion. The game's engine renders smoke very well too. Many of the levels are superbly designed and include a medieval town, a castle, a cathedral, an opera house, and my favorite, a haunted lunatic asylum. This game's levels are works of art in their own right.

The weapons also are good. Your basic weapon is the "painkiller" which I assume the game is named after. Its primary fire is a spinning wheel of daggers, and its alt fire sends out a sharp piece of metal that you retrieve boomerang fashion. You also get a rocket launcher that can literally send your attackers flying off in several directions. The shotgun's primary fire is rather boring and just involves shooting shot at your enemies, but its alt fire turns attackers into brittle ice which you can shatter with a primary blast. I also like the weapon that uses lightning to fry attackers. My favorite weapon is the stake gun which in primary fire shoots stakes of wood impaling enemies to walls, floors, or just runs them through! In alternate fire it lobs a powerful grenade that can blast an entire mob of baddies. Oddly, the game doesn't allow you to use these weapon's full potentials in boss battles. In many cases the bosses are immune to your weapons.

Speaking of bosses, if you think you hate boss battles, then this game will really make you loathe them. They are the "anchovies" you might hate on an otherwise luscious pizza. The bosses and the battles look simply spectacular, but the gameplay reaches a low point in these battles. In almost every boss battle, you need to know tricks to defeat each boss. For example, you need to make a boss killable by shooting his hammer. Now, do you think I spent a lot of time shooting that boss's hammer? Of course not! I sat there shooting that boss which is the logical thing to do. I shot, and I shot, and I shot...All to no avail. Almost all of the boss battles follow this same idiotic style of gameplay. You cannot logically discover how to defeat the boss, and the only way I got past most of the bosses is by looking up how to kill them on the internet.

I didn't even bother killing the last boss or finishing this game. I just got fed up with the often wretched gameplay. I'll go back and enjoy the parts I like, and there are many such parts. However, those "anchovies" have left a bad taste in my mouth that I cannot ignore. If you love shooters with great graphics and level design and can overlook wooden-headed gameplay design, then Painkiller may be the game for you. Otherwise, give it a try, but make sure you know the seller's return policy.

Ah, how refreshing is this game? What better way to wind down from a long day at work than to watch some basketball (March Madness does start soon, forgive me) and mindlessly pin guys against a wall using a 5-foot stake fired from a stake gun? There's few better ways. Painkiller is, in every right, a first person shooter. Notice I did not say tactical shooter, as this game simply requires collecting enough ammo to blow everything away. And since ammo is plentiful in this game, feel free to blast away.

The main reason you should get this game is for the level design. It sounds hokey, I know, to base my justification to buy a game solely on the levels, but the design in these levels is exactly what makes the game as a whole fun. I'd recommend picking up the game just to see it's interesting depiction of Hell and the levels in that chapter leading up to the final boss fight.

As said before, this game does have it's faults. There are times it tries to be something it definately can NOT pull off. Really, what do you expect out of a story like this?... A man dies in a car crash and spends years in purgatory, doing Heaven's dirty work until he finally gives up and says he wants out. He's put on a last mission by a mysterious angel who only plays the role of telling you where to go next, and you meet up with Eve (yea, like as in Adam and Eve, where's Adam? I don't know, doesn't matter) and she's supposed to help you out in some way but really doesn't outside of getting kidnapped and moving the game along into the last chapter. Don't you think you're brain gets racked enough trying to keep up with the story? They should have scrapped it, yea cutscenes are cool, but just make some generic goal, like stop Satan, and add in action screenshots of our man kickin' butt and takin' names instead of being all pissed off at an angel.

Thankfully, as said in some other reviews, the main part of the time spent in this game is moving from area to area and blasting things away, which is very fun. The Havok physics engine is superb and really makes blowing stuff up satisfying. Use it to play little mini games, like how many times can I get this guy to spin in the air before he hits the ground? Or my personal favorite, let's kill this guy, drag this other guy over and kill him so he lands in a very inappropriate position relative to the first guy.

Either way, I highly recommend this game, especially for the price you can get it.