PAINKILLER OVERDOSE

Category: Games

Publisher: Dreamcatcher
Developer: Mindware Studios

Painkiller Overdose is a game revolving around Belial the half angel, half demon gatekeeper. Playing the tortured son of heaven and hell Belial roams the ruins and war fields fighting monsters and Zombies (Dreamcatcher claims “more than 40 sickly twisted monsters”).
The game is in essence, an FPS (read First Person Shooter). The game demo (which is what I played) starts with an impressive background that is somewhere between an Egyptian scroll and a forbidden stone tablet. I really liked the loading screen with an inverted pentagon and a sundial. The sound is sufficiently eerie to go with the feel of the game.
Since I am more or less a gaming Idiot (read not a hardcore gamer), I initially expected a cutscene to give me a background of the entire game, a story of sorts. But then I was told that they don't make 'em like that any more. So then I expected a tutorial, but my loyal gamer friend corrected me again and told me to play the first level patiently for some guidance. But nah ah! No flashes from heaven(or hell) in the game. So, if you are going to play the game you must proceed blindly. I was told that this game was merely a sequel in the Painkiller series. But, if you pick this game out of the racks at the department store, don’t expect to understand the entire concept. The installation was simple and took very little time. So I was all set and ready to go.
Obviously I started playing the ridiculously simple beginners level called Daydream. At this point I found myself in a Civil War inspired arena facing zombies with skeletal faces. You have 8 different weapons which I have to say I found decently interesting especially the dragon egg grenades which spew green toxic goo. How you proceed is – kill the monsters and collect their souls.
There is one thing about FPS that you just can’t overlook – they ARE fun. So, disregarding them is probably the last thing you would want to do. There is this silly fun in shooting everything that comes in front of you and I have to confess that in spite of the intellectual lacuna I enjoyed it (smiles). However, if blood and gore is your prerogative you won’t be too disappointed. The monsters, which appear from an inferno, have a tendency to completely disintegrate with body parts flying around. On the not so rare occasions that you blast a monster that is too close to you end up getting splattered with rotting flesh and blood. This is probably why it has been rated Mature.
What is entertaining are Belial’s wisecracks as he goes around ridding the world of monsters from the “kiss my half angel ass” to “tastes like chicken”. Apart from this, where sound is concerned it is sufficiently good but nothing extraordinary. The track that plays( the eerie one, remember) seems straight out of C grade horror movies that few people would like to go and watch. So, there is hardly anything innovative there.
The starting screen or the User Interactive screen is quite interesting as I have mentioned earlier. However, I was not exceptionally impressed with the graphics. It was just okay almost average by today’s gaming standards. At no point of time will you feel “Damn this is so real, it freaks me out”. So that certainly does not get a thumbs up from me. The effects are just about alright too. It also took quite a bit of time to load which is another minus. This is particularly irritating when you are waiting for a level to load or waiting to resume the game after dying.
The game video wasn’t exactly smooth in the “standard video” mode i.e. an 800x600 resolution and medium detailing on my system. But I can't really comment on the graphics because, as a casual gamer I don't have a dedicated graphics processor. Comments are invited however regarding the graphics. One thing I'd definitely like to state though is, had the game story been a tiny bit more interesting I would have been extremely inquisitive about how the game would look with the highest performance using a high end GPU.
The game is divided into four different difficulty levels- Daydream, Insomnia, Nightmare and Trauma. I played the “Daydream” level up to quite a bit. It didn’t have a mode called the black tarot mode the purpose of which I couldn’t decipher even after playing the remaining levels. I got killed in the “Insomnia” level before the first checkpoint. The checkpoints are where your game gets auto saved and they are the animated red inverted pentagons that you find on the way when you have killed the required number of monsters. I tried playing the “Nightmare” and “Trauma” levels as well but died within approximately 2 minutes. So, for a beginner, the higher levels are quite on the tougher side. For experienced gamers, well, I got a gamer friend of mine to play the “Insomnia” level, and he didn’t get very far either. So, it isn’t exactly easy.
Overdose is definitely a game you should give a try, if you’ve been a fan of the Painkiller series and have some idea of the story. It is also an excellent game if you’ve just had a fight and are too chicken to face real people – you can gun down the 40 sickly twisted monsters. However, it would definitely not be your kind of game if intellectual stimulation is what you seek. Coz’ in the end shooting monsters such that they explode like tomatoes is just plain dumb fun and that’s all there is to it.