Painkiller: Resurrection Demo

When it comes to mindless killing, wacky weapons and insane amounts of mobs charging at you at the same time, the Painkiller series takes the cake and it deserves it. While the first episode was certainly the most refined, the installments that followed weren't too bad on their own, although they lacked any kind of originality and they became a bit too disorienting.

Painkiller: Resurrection is a game developed by the fans of the franchise, who could not bear the wait and the lack of interest from the real developers anymore. Thus, a handful of people decided to use the same platform and create an entirely new story from scratch, complete with a new main character and a plot that involves him dying and going to hell.

As in the original release, the story is quite simple, although the writers did try to make the players empathize with the main character a bit, by including a little twist toward the end. Hence, it all starts when a hired assassin is about to detonate a bomb in order to take out his mobster targets, when a bus full of people happens to appear out of nowhere. With no way of stopping the bomb, the main characters jumps in front of the bus in one last attempt to stop it, but his plan fails and everything goes up into flames.

First off, it is worth mentioning again that the game is actually a fan-made product, which means that they did it out of passion and had no access to professional tools, or an adequate bug testing team. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the game has plenty of glitches and bugs, which can make it very difficult for you to enjoy the story.

The level design is often very uninspired, because it is very difficult to find the way toward the next area, not to mention the triggers that fail and you get stuck with no possibility to move on without a reload. One interesting modification, however, is the fact that you can now make a run for it through the level if you do not feel like you can handle all the enemies, which was not possible in the previous titles.

While Painkiller: Resurrection cannot be called exactly bad, it can be almost impossible to play at times, not to mention frustrating and annoying. Thus, unless you are a huge fan of the series and you cannot abstain yourself from giving the title a run for its money, the other releases are definitely better alternatives.