Painkiller: Overdose Review

People love--no, they need--to make comparisons. Comparing and evaluating is pretty much hardwired into the brain of most living things, and it certainly helped us evolve from the primordial Campbell's into the sophisticated, Jackass-watching species we are today (fruit=good; rock shaped like fruit=not so much). But there is a downside to this tendency to place things side-by-side (as my penis enlargement spam points out ad nauseum): we can lose sight of the unique qualities of something if all we focus on is how it stacks up against the competition.

Well, no matter. This hoary trope aside, there is simply no way to evaluate Painkiller: Overdose without comparing it not just to the original Painkiller, but to the stellar shooters that have appeared in the past few months. While Overdose, like its parent game, is unapologetically old-school, we have to wonder whether the time has passed for this kind of FPS when there are so many more satisfying games vying for our time and money. Gamers raised on Doom and Quake have presumably grown into mature adults with more sophisticated expectations for a shooter.

Overdose (developed by Paradox and published by JoWood) a standalone sequel/expansion to Painkiller, began life as a user-created mod and unfortunately, the slightly amateurish vibe is everywhere, from the uninspired level design to the lame humor and repetitive script, from the herky-jerky pacing to the utterly incomprehensible back story which ultimately has no influence on the gameplay. In a landscape populated by such brilliant titles as Bioshock, Half Life 2, or even Halo 3, Overdose's lack of dimensionality and depth are huge liabilities.


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