12-Jan-2004 Outside, the wind whistles through the jaded streets of a city still beleaguered by the shadow of the Soviets. The grimy features of Warsaw's faceless tower blocks start fading into the cold winter night. Meanwhile, in his posh hotel, young Will Porter has just fired a stake into a zombie's face and watched the poor bugger get pinned by the cheek to a ceiling 15ft above his head. For good measure, he takes careful aim and fires two more stakes into its dangly bits and wanders off giggling like a schoolgirl.
Right now, Painkiller is barely a blip on the hype radar. Dwarfed by a variety of big guns and developed by an obscure Polish outfit, people might say that the chances of its success are minimal. At least, stupid people would say that.
From what we've seen, heard and played, Painkiller is going to be supreme fun. With its gore, Havok-ated ragdolls, sublime monsters and a physics engine that regularly blasts rabid nuns into orbit (as well as stapling them to the scenery), the smart money is on Painkiller for being the first one at the dairy after the fat cats have had their cream.
Paradise Lost "The basic story is that you and your wife die in a car accident," explains Adrian Chmielarz, project manager and head honcho at People Can Fly. "She goes straight to heaven, but you haven't been a good guy, so you're stuck in purgatory.
"After 20 years down there, you're approached by the Archangel Samuel with a proposal: Lucifer is starting armageddon by sending his forces to heaven through purgatory - so if you clean out these nests of demons, you'll be granted entrance to heaven."
This may sound like the Gospel according to St Stupid, but with a couple of twists and a sprinkling of heresy, it's certainly an engaging concept. You might say it's a cross between What Dreams May Come and Serious Sam, that somehow isn't a pile of putrefying shit.
This may not be entirely the inferno you're expecting either: fire and brimstone are on the menu, but here the emphasis is on hellish variety. You'll be battling through gothic cathedrals and graveyards, but alongside these lie levels based in prisons, docklands, military bases and opera houses. All textures and monsters are level-specific too, so a sense of progression and development (so lacking in games like Contract J.A.C.K.) should be maintained throughout the game.
Paradise Regained The range of monsties available for your perforating delight looks set to be vast too: psychonuns, evil monks, Arabian sword-wielders and bizarre leaping zombies (who lick the floor while they writhe around without any hands or feet) are among the minions you'll battle. For the grunt-level creatures, the main tactic is to stalk you in huge crowds, try to flank you and generally get blown to the four-quarters by your grenade launcher. In among these brain-dead stumblers, however, are the masters: the smart cookies who know better than simply to run after you or throw lumps of their own flesh in your direction. A Skull, for example, will grab nearby minions, wring their necks and use them as a temporary shield.
Adrian, meanwhile, can't help but grin when he starts describing the samurai master. "He's got some cool moves, and some of the best animations in the game. When he's low on health he understands he can't win, so he commits seppuku (Japanese ritual disembowelment), and gives the rest of his life force to the surrounding ninjas." How thoughtful.
Paradise Fragged For the really stunning bad guys, though, you just have to look at the bosses - you can't miss them, they're the ones 50-100 times your size with a weapon the size of a bus. In a welcome return to Zelda-style bosses and the gigantic platform foes of old, Painkiller specialises in spectacular conclusions to each of its chapters. Take Thor, the giant hammer-wielding demon you confront among some forgotten ruins. Every time he hits the ground with his weapon, the earth buckles and you're hurled high into the air and the fragile columns and masonry of the surrounding temples are dislodged and fall around you in perfect physics-led harmony. The game presumably leads up to a scrap with Lucifer himself, so expect the finale to be even bigger and badder.
The atmosphere of Painkiller is very much that of the early Doom games, and while it won't be competing with Doom 3, its gameplay and atmosphere (and colossal bosses) are close to the fundamentals of the id legacy. Whether the game fits as a cohesive whole, as opposed to a collection of fun levels, is yet to be seen; but for fast-paced FPS action that'll make you cackle, Painkiller is a very promising prospect.
You'll only have five weapons to play with in the game (the designers going for quality over quantity), but each has a miraculous three firing modes, the extra one provided by a swift simultaneous tap of the mouse buttons. So, the Stake-gun doubles as a grenade launcher and super-stake-grenade launcher; and the titular Painkiller weapon is not only a spinny-bladey-shredding contraption, but also a handily chucked receiver for a laser-tripwire affair that cuts passing zombies in two. Heaven's hitman has no truck with boring old sniping and sneaking - it's gory carnage or nowt.
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