Painkiller: Overdose

Painkiller Overdose is of course the expansion to the first person shooter Painkiller. In Overdose you play as a half demon, half angel, (you do the math) bent on revenge against the demon dog Cerberus for ripping off his wings and imprisoning him in hell.

Right off the bat you'll notice that it's harder than Painkiller. In fact it's a lot harder since it keeps freezing and lagging. Logically I'd assume this is due to my computer. But this is a middle of the road FPS. It's not like it's Oblivion or something. I can play Doom 3 just fine and that has better graphics so what the hell? So I turn down the graphics until it looks like Quake II. The menu screens have this weird glitchy MissingNo. shit plastered all over them. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it's my computer or incorrect directX or something but I'm not willing to look the other way with the load times. These are the longest fricking loading times for any game I've ever played in my life. Longer than any RPG. Even longer than any Splinter Cell game. It's roughly a 3-4 minute wait from the time you press go to the time that you can move around in a level. It's one hell of an incentive to not die, cause if you do it's another 3-4 minutes before you get another whack at it. Even if my computer *is* a bit dated it shouldn't take anywhere near that long. It's really great when you get to a difficult part that you can't figure out. You spend more time loading the game than actually playing it. The load time for the first boss was three times longer than the time it took me to beat the boss.

The biggest problem in the game would have to be the weapons. Your arsenal is full if bizarre and depraved-looking weapons. In any other game, you have guns and the guns all shoot bullets/explosives or if it's really fancy some kind of laser or plasma. In Overdose it takes you five minutes just to accept the fact that the severed head you're holding is a weapon and that screaming noise that it makes it what you use to kill things with. It's hard to get used to. Also in the first half of the game you're always out of ammo. It's not because the enemies are strong or it's difficult to aim. It's because every gun shoots like twenty rounds at once and wastes your ammunition either on overkilling an enemy or more likely just making pock marks in the wall. Often you find yourself running around while being attacked and scrolling through all of your weapons to find something you can shoot. Does this have ammo? No. Does this have ammo? No. If and when you find something useable you're probably already dead.

Razor Cube: This is the hand to hand weapon that doesn't take ammo to use so get familiar with it cause you don't have ammo. It spins around in your hand and chops up enemies. It reminds me of that cube in the movie Hypercube that spun around and chopped up that guy... or did it? I have no idea what was going on in that movie.
Bone Gun: It's basically a shotgun but it shoots bones. Left click shoots one bone (out of two barrels.) Right click shoots some weird black shit that temporarily freezes enemies.

Chain Gun: The only gun that looks half way normal. Left click it fires bullets like a machine gun for as long as you hold down the button. Right click is a quasi rocket launcher that fires three rounds in a triangular formation per discharge. It seems to go through or around enemies sometimes and for a rocket launcher it's pretty weak. It doesn't have a very large blast radius so you have to have it explode practically on the enemy to do any damage at all. Although I seem to have no problem injuring myself with it.

Eggs: For some reason these reptile eggs are explosive. Not only that but you can remotely detonate them with a... is that a lizard? It doesn't make any sense to have remote mines in this game. It's never possible to sneak up on enemies and use them. The only time I really need them is when I don't have ammo or a chance in hell with the razor cube and in that scenario I don't want something that I have to detonate one second after I throw it. I want something that I throw and it explodes AKA a grenade.


Nuclear gun: It harnesses the power of nuclear waste. Left click fires these canisters of radioactive sludge which kill on impact, making me wonder why they need to be filled with ooze at all. It's not like the enemy's around long enough to die from radiation poisoning. Actually the canisters stay around for a while, emitting green gas which does seem to have an effect on really close enemies. But really they'd be just as lethal filled with rocks or even candy corn. Right click just shoots a stream of that same green gas directly at an enemy. In reality this would be extremely inconvenient because really how far can you spray gas? And what if it's windy out? What If it's blowing at you? You'd at least need a mask.

Head: This is the first thing you ever see when you start Overdose. (Welcome to Overdose; here's an unbelievably hideous severed demon head with a distended spine hanging out the bottom.) It's your first real "weapon." Left click shoots a laser. I have no Idea why. I guess it's coming out of it's eyes but it only shoots one beam. Which eye is it coming from? If it's coming from both there should be two beams dammit. Right click makes the head scream and project some barely visible... gas cloud? Again I don't know what the hell's going on. When it hits an enemy and takes effect they start convulsing and basically drop dead. The little icon by your ammo is a picture of a heart. That typically indicates what type of ammo the weapon requires. So I guess what it's saying is that in order to make the screaming head project a cloud you need to power it with hearts, five hearts to be exact.

Crossbow: Left click fires/wastes three bolts. Right click fires/wastes six shrunken heads. the heads bounce around and explode. Two of them might hit enemies. The other four will either hit nothing or hit you.

Sword: Left click shoots three giggling skulls in a horizontal line. They sort of hone in on enemies and injure them. They also sort of fly past the enemies and do nothing. Right click makes the sword fly around like a boomerang. I never really got the hang of this. It seems like you have to have a ton of crystals to even get it to start. Once it's flying around you can drag your crosshairs on to an enemy and if you can manage to hold it on them long enough, the sword will fly over and chop them in half.

With all that said I've decided to make my own Painkiller Overdose weapon. It's a chair gun that shoots brains. You can't shoot it until it's full of 500 brains and then it shoots them all at once killing one or two enemies... unless you miss. This is just a rough concept but the finished one will be made of polka-dot intestines that are on fire. Also, right click makes an aurora borealis occur but only if you have at least 17 shampoo bottles.

The other most annoying thing in the game is the gas. There's gas everywhere and it hurts you badly. Enemies throw gas balls at you. Gas comes out of their chests. There are tear gas cans. Spray paint cans. It comes out of plants. Nuclear gas. Gas in the water. Gas from the floor. Gas from pitchforks. There's so much gas and usually you don't even see it until it's killing you.

Everything moronic aside, the level designs are great despite the anachronisms and even though all of them are completely random and unrelated.

I don’t think they used ballistas in the American Civil War.

You thought you were safe from angler fish in the desert? You were wrong bitch!

The enemies are all interesting and incidentally have a tendency to look like characters from various movies and videogames. I don’t know if any of them were intentional but I’m pretty sure that the level names “Animal Farm” and “Village of the Damned” were direct references.


Second from the right, same hair.


Team Fortress 2

Silent Hill: The movie actually illustrates it better than the video game.