Painkiller: Resurrection--The Review

[fuller556]

Some of you have been waiting for this, so here it is: my full review of Painkiller: Resurrection after finishing it on Insomnia.

After reading some negative reviews about the game, I still had high hopes for it (I've had it for a long time now, just never played it). When I started the first level, The Cathedral, I had a good feeling about the game. I experienced no major issues and finished the level on my first try. It felt a little bit like Black Edition all over again.

Graphically speaking, the game looks great for the most part, though I did have problems with rendering in the Forbidden Valley stage. Additionally, red souls do not render whatsoever; this is with the newest video drivers. So you have to more or less guess where they are to get them, which isn't hard, but it shouldn't be necessary. The game is also more taxing than earlier Painkiller games. My Radeon HD 4870 cruises in the earlier games with AA in effect but struggles in some areas during Resurrection. The sounds are mainly recycled from earlier games, as well, but they still get the job done.

One thing that I really like about this installment is that it's more story-driven. Cut scenes in the middle of some stages give you a breather from the action and show just what Bill is up against. These segments seem to be inspired by Max Payne with the comic style of storytelling with voice-overs giving the dialogue. The voice acting could be better, but it's passable. Another interesting development, however, is that during the stages, you'll hear a voice guiding you on your journey. It adds a cool dimension to plot development and gives you that sense that you're working towards something.

As far as the gameplay itself, Resurrection fixes a lot of my biggest complaints about Overdose, particularly with respect to enemy difficulty. In Overdose, I found myself getting slaughtered in the first stage on even Insomnia difficulty. However, the difficulty is much more balanced in Resurrection; very seldom did I find myself in what I felt was a hopeless or unfair situation. When I did, it was probably more carelessness than anything, which is a big difference. Additionally, health, ammo, and armor are plentiful, which is a good thing given the size of the stages. In all, Resurrection is a far more balanced and, as a result, more enjoyable game.

Speaking of stages, the ones you'll face here are gargantuan. Be prepared to spend as much as 2 hours on a few of them, especially if you want to unlock all the Tarot cards. I like the overall stage design; stages are much more open, and you're mostly free to explore for secrets and bonus items. This allows you also to return to earlier areas of a level in most stages to pick up armor or health that you didn't need before; for the most part, you're no longer walled in until the end of the level to get that secret item you just couldn't figure out how to reach before. It also means that you will almost always have room to retreat from a tough fight to switch weapons or think of a new strategy.

The large levels can be a double-edged sword, however. You really need a good sense of direction to find your way around. Also, it may seem as if you have no clear direction on where you should be going. It is possible to figure that out with exploration, but always have your weapons ready. The open-world-esque stage design definitely takes some getting used to.

Weapons in Resurrection are largely the same as in Black Edition, with the exception of Mr. Molotov. Think of this as an improved Bolt Gun; it launches only one bolt at a time, but the bolts are just as powerful as the Stake Gun, and they fire MUCH faster. However, it can be just as maddening to aim accurately. The alternate fire, instead of launching bouncing bombs, launches a single incendiary grenade. This has an enormous time delay, but when it goes off, it can clear a large group immediately--including you, if you're not careful. The splash radius is immense. This weapon is a must in later levels, however. Overall, I love the choice of weapons as all of my favorites are back in full force, including the Painkiller (forget about that silly Hell Cube knock-off), Shotgun/Freezer, Chaingun/Rocket Launcher, and the Stake Gun/Grenade Launcher. The Electrodriver rounds out your arsenal.

The Tarot card selection in Resurrection is stellar; Iron Will, Triple Haste, Soul Catcher, Armor Regeneration, Health Stealer, and Rage all make a triumphant return. However, because the game is so much shorter, you can only ever equip 2 cards--1 gold and 1 silver--at a time. However, you can use your single gold card 3 times per level; whether this is a bug or just a way to compensate for the lack of a 3-gold-card arsenal, this can be very useful in places.

The Tarot card unlocking conditions can once again be a major thorn in the side. For example, getting to all of the secrets in Level 2, The Forbidden Valley, is extremely difficult (to be clear, one isn't so hard to reach; it's getting out alive that's next to impossible). Fortunately, the cards you will earn help to justify the stress of doing the near-impossible in a couple of the stages.

So Resurrection sounds pretty good so far, right? It is from a gameplay standpoint. But here is where Resurrection returns to the graveyard: stability.

The biggest irritation of any video game, especially on the PC, is to find some game-breaking glitch that just completely prevents you from progressing. Once you get beyond the first stage, Resurrection becomes riddled with such atrocities.

I first discovered Resurrection's issues when I tried to meet the Tarot card condition for Level 2: Destroy all enemies. This level has a boss at the end, a super-sized Mutant that serves as one of Hell's generals. On my first run through the level, I discovered another group of enemies beyond the boss that I hadn't encountered the first time through, because I chose to complete the sections in a different order than what the game wanted. Big mistake; as soon as I encountered those monsters, the exit portal vanished, never to return. I was completely stuck in the level; there was absolutely no way for me to finish. After searching in vain for the portal, I reloaded an earlier save and went to that section before hitting the sewer; this allowed me to finish the level "properly" and unlock the card.

What's even more vexing is that this doesn't seem to happen on every level. I suspect it only happened here because of the Tarot card condition.

Resurrection is also prone to hanging, similar to Overdose. More often than not, I have to completely restart my system to clear up the problem. Unfortunately, this even seems to have an effect on the Steam client itself; almost every time this happened, Steam crashed on launch after the restart, forcing me to launch it a second time. Additionally, level load times are still excruciatingly long, even when reloading a save, on most stages. It sometimes takes up to 2 full minutes for a stage to load, even from a saved game. On the plus side, I never encountered any problems with save game corruption in this edition.

Another issue I ran into often is getting stuck in the scenery. This happens with maddening regularity. For instance, at the start of The Haunted City, you're basically waist-deep in water. I actually kept getting stuck as soon as I moved forward! I had to actually bunny-hop across just to avoid being trapped in the background. Even enemies sometimes get stuck, and this is very pronounced later in this same level with some of the ogres that appear on the higher ledges. Even the physics are off; with some monsters, if you use the Stake Gun to impale them, they will actually launch into the air and then become pinned literally to NOTHING. Unfortunately, they often dangle too highly to grab their souls when this happens, which makes obtaining the Tarot card in The Haunted City maddeningly difficult as it's a soul you could have gotten and can't afford to lose. This forces you to use alternative weapons just to make sure you can get their souls when they die.

I can actually work to a degree with all of this because the overall gameplay is solid enough to put up with the hassles, and the bug in Level 2 is not that hard to work around if you know how to tackle the stage. But here is the one bug that is completely unforgivable and will likely make me put Resurrection away for all time should I choose to complete it on Trauma.

I finished my Insomnia run a little over an hour ago now. The Tarot card condition is simple enough; find 1500 gold or more. I didn't do this on my first time through; in fact, I triggered the final battle without even knowing I was in that area. So once I beat them, I skipped the ending so that I could reload my save from just before that point and then find the rest of the gold I needed before returning to finish the job. What an exercise in frustration this turned out to be.

Getting all the gold I needed was not too hard a task for me. I found another path within the level that I had explored earlier, but I got killed and never went back that way again. Once I had the gold, it took me awhile, but I made it back to the final battle. But there was one tiny problem when I beat them: THE GAME DID NOT RECOGNIZE I HAD BEATEN IT! What's SUPPOSED to happen is that you morph into a demon, zap the bosses, and then the ending story plays. Well, that didn't happen at all; instead, the true final boss simply disappeared and left a red soul (I know this because I walked over where the body was and heard that familiar roar of the more powerful souls). So once again, I was stuck in a level, but more importantly, I was trapped in a game that could not be completed.

I searched in vain for a solution to this and found that at least one other person has run into this, as well. In the end, I had to install the Powermad mod for Resurrection just to legitimately finish the game. Thankfully, it does work with the Steam version, and once I installed it, I was able to complete the game normally, unlock the final Tarot card, and view the ending. Still, this was something that should never have been necessary in the first place.

One final note: Resurrection hurts its own replayability. If you beat the game with all Tarot cards unlocked, you are actually asked if you want to see the game's ending from Trauma difficulty or the ending for your status and current difficulty. I chose to view the Trauma ending; after the fiasco I had with just getting the game to recognize I had won, I question whether I will ever go through on a higher difficulty or just declare the game finished.

Had it not been for this last, game-crushing glitch in the finale, I could have rated Resurrection much higher. As it stands, however, unless some patches are released to fix these glaring problems with overall stability and playability, I can only give Resurrection a 5.5 out of 10. And that's a shame, because behind all of the glitches I have just called out is a worthy game. Hopefully, the developers will eventually fix these bugs in a final patch for the game. I could easily give the game an 8.0 if not for these problems.

[N. Mason]

If I recall correctly, Mr. Molotov has a very, let's say, crude model. Its polygon amount is low, and the texure resoultion is also low. It is a shame when comparing with other original weapons.
And the secondary attack feels like a nuclear bomb, killing the player very easily.
Is it overpowered? (As I spawned it with cheats)

[fuller556]

You know, despite the bomb's blast radius, I didn't think it was extraordinarily easy to kill myself with it. Yes, it did happen a few times, but the delay is so large that it's easy to get far enough away so as to only suffer a few points of damage at worst when it goes off.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's overpowered, either. The long delay of the bomb's explosion prevents you from abusing it and forces you to use it strategically to get the maximum impact without harming yourself. And some enemies are tough enough that it takes 2 bolts to kill them. Also, even though the bolts load much quicker than the Stake Gun, there's still enough of a delay that you can't be careless with it; continuous fire is still reasonably slow, and if you're not the most accurate person, you can waste a lot of ammo before you hit your target. These characteristics help give it balance. It's still a great weapon, though, and easily took the place of the Stake Gun when I wanted to spear enemies.