Fast paced first person shooter based in a very creative depiction of purgatory. You are a half-demon, half-angel dude that was locked up somewhere in purgatory. Suddenly you are free and it’s time to blast through all manner of weird creatures to get revenge on the guys that locked you up.

Release Date

October 2007.

Pros

It is like playing Serious Sam in Hell.

Good assortment of weapons including the standard shotgun and machine gun. Also includes other weirder weapons like the face that shoots out some laser thingy and can also scream at your enemies.

Lots and lots of very weird and wonderful monsters to fight.

Good non-thinking, run and gun, shoot everything in sight game.

There is a customisable power up mechanism in the form of tarot cards. As you play the game, if you finish a level and meet certain conditions, you are awarded a tarot card. These tarot cards can then be placed on the use slot so the next level you can use that tarot card to give you a certain power. Some tarot cards need to be activated in game and can only be used once in the whole level, while other tarot cards are “always on”. But you must use money you collect through out the game to place these tarot cards. Luckily you can replay completed levels to get more money.

This game has an interesting way of handling frame rate drops. Instead of skipping frames to keep the game going at the same speed, it shows every frame making the game run slower. The whole game goes into slow motion mode, so you can still move around and aim, only slower.

Cons

The reload time is way too long. On my PC it took around 46 seconds to reload a save game for the first level. This includes quick loads when you die. So every time I die, that’s another extra 46 seconds down the drain.

Each level is a different environment, but they do not link cohesively. The first level looks like Pompei and Mount Vesuvius and you are fighting people on fire but the second level you are in Japan shooting up ninjas. I failed to see how you got from one place to the other. My best guess is that they are all in a separate location of purgatory.

Although fun it is not as much fun as Serious Sam overall.

Other Points

Multiplayer is the standard twitch shooter fest. Hardly anyone plays online anymore though.

Although it does not have as many monsters as Serious Sam and the levels are not as large as Serious Sam, there are enough monsters to make it fun and the levels are large enough for decent entertainment.

This game is very gory. Not Soldier Of Fortune type gory. More like blood splats everywhere gory and body parts flying all over the place gory.

Biases

Reviewed version build 84 of the game.

I really liked Serious Sam, all the Doom games and Quake 2.

I also really liked Alien Vs Predator, Soldier of Fortune 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and Call Of Duty 4.

I also liked Battlefield 1942, Delta Force and Spec Ops 2.

I have not played any of the other Painkiller games.

I have completed the game.

DRM

I cannot remember what DRM was on the retail version of Painkiller Overdose. I do not own the game anymore so I cannot check.

The game is available DRM free from GOG.com.

Patches

Build 84 – No comment.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on GOG.com)

Minimum system requirements – Windows: XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
Processor: 1.5 GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
RAM: 512MB RAM
Hard Drive: 2.5 GB available
DirectX Version: 128 MB DirectX(R) 9 Compatible Video Card (NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) FX 5600, ATI(TM) Radeon(TM) 9600 or Better)
Sound: DirectX 9 or better compatible sound card
Mouse & Keyboard

Computer Played On

Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
2Gb RAM
ATI Radeon X1600 256Mb RAM
Win XP Pro
Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screen shots are taken with my settings.

Handy Tips

There is a way to make Painkiller Overdose reload faster. Just create a Maps folder in your
Painkiller Overdose\Data folder.
ie. If your Painkiller Overdose is installed in
C:\Program Files\DreamCatcher\Painkiller Overdose
then create the Maps folder in
C:\Program Files\DreamCatcher\Painkiller Overdose\Data\

For the first level this fix improved my reload times from 46 seconds to 28 seconds. I found this fix from this forum entry.