[h1][i]“You’re dead! We killed you!”[/i]
~Emil Antonowsky, RoboCop[/h1]
[b]JoWooD[/b], who previously consumed [b]DreamCatcher[/b] with its [b]Painkiller[/b] IP and kept milking the living Hell out of the poor thing, was finally dead. Which means that finally, [i]finally[/i] we stopped getting crappy mods being sold to us as proper commercial products, right? [i]Right?[/i] Well... [i]About that[/i]. Remember that old [b]RoboCop[/b] meme? The one about how “the dude died, but they still made him go to work”? Well… yeah. [b]Nordic Games[/b], who just acquired our guys, were like, “Let’s see what the f*ckers were doing before we got ‘em.” And… yeah. The evil’s back. And not in the way we wanted.
I'm joking, of course. Not like I have access to [b]Nordic[/b]'s dirty laundry (oh, but it's dirty, the smell of this product is a dead giveaway), but with everything that was happening in mind, it's safe to guess that they wanted to keep the name alive while making some quick bucks for the next big thing they planned for the series called [b]Hell & Damnation[/b]. Which was supposed to be, like, a glorified remake, but we're not here to talk about [b]Hell & Damnation[/b]. We're here to talk about the so-called [b]Recurring Evil[/b] ([i]Man[/i], they couldn't have possibly come up with a better name...).
The thing is – [b]Painkiller[/b] only had one proper game. Aside from it and its port to the original [b]Xbox[/b], there was nothing but a stinking series of mods, one worse than the another (well, technically, there was an expansion, too, but it also sucked). [b]Painkiller: Overdose[/b] felt like something from [b]ModDB[/b] that was made for laughs only. [b]Painkiller: Resurrection[/b] was a downright broken mess made by unapologetic trash makers. [b]Painkiller: Redemption[/b] was not... really... [i]that[/i] bad, but it was unfinished (ended with “to be continued”) and had only a few crappy arena-like levels, while it was 2011 already and [b]People Can Fly[/b] (who made the original game) had already released their new pride and joy – [b]Bulletstorm[/b]. So yeah, nobody really expected anything good from [b]Painkiller[/b]. The series got some really bad reputation, and it was all deserved. But let's take a look at the [b]Recurring Evil[/b] anyway. I mean, it was a new publisher and stuff. Maybe it isn't that bad? Miracles do happen, after all.
But... no. Not in this case, at least. [b]Recurring Evil[/b] is almost exactly what we had in [b]Redemption[/b] (even comes with the splash screen of [b]Redemption[/b]'s makers and it looks like the guys, despite not finishing their previous work, were actually involved), but... worse. Well, technically, it was supposed to be better. Because while the levels in [b]Redemption[/b] were boring and all looked the same (which didn't really help with its focus on the arena-like thingy), the [b]Recurring Evil[/b] tried to liven things up a bit by throwing in things like a ruined bridge, a cemetery during the fall, etc. And, uh... I mean, it was 2012. [b]HALO 4[/b], [b]Call of Duty: Black Ops II[/b]... Who... are we trying to impress here... exactly?
But OK, I'm not trying to be an ass. They tried. The real problem with the [b]Recurring Evil[/b] is not that it looks ancient (at the moment it came out, [b]Painkiller[/b] was, what? Eight years old?); the real problem with it is that... it's downright broken. And nobody f*cking cared. OK, [i]OK![/i] It's not nearly as broken as [b]Resurrection[/b]! True. I can give it that. But still, it's broken. Up to the point where it's laughable at times. For example, the second level (there is only one chapter this time with only five levels in it; that's the whole thing we've got for [b]$7.99[/b]) has that spider-like boss we've already seen before (the game doesn't have any new enemies and is simply re-using the old models). And in my case, it got stuck behind an invisible wall, where neither of my weapons was able to reach it. [i]Noice[/i]. I tried to load my save, but guess what? In my next try, I was unable to start the encounter at all. Because, you guessed it, the invisible f*cking wall. Absolutely fantastic. I did manage to kill the mof*cker on my third try, but... that's just it. That's how the game works. And the worst of all? Multiple endings are back.
In the original [b]Painkiller[/b], there was that ending locked behind the highest difficulty of the game. Which was kinda a pain in the butt (especially since in the original mint version of the game we were supposed to unlock the highest difficulty first, unlike the so-called [b]Black Edition[/b], where the said difficulty is accessible from the start), but still, it was a thing. Especially thanks to how the highest difficulty used to disable certain aspects of gameplay. But the original [b]Painkiller[/b] wasn't nearly as buggy as this! I mean, there were always bugs, but a game-breaking invisible wall?! Goodness!
Moreover, the endings are confusing as f*ck now. Like, OK, we're supposed to finish the game on a high difficulty in order to get the good ending – nothing new here, been there done that – but... what's with the choice on the final level? I mean, the last map suddenly decided to cosplay [b]Morpheus[/b] and give us a red and blue choice. We're free to choose between the path of evil (red) and the path of good (blue). Obviously, it means we're getting two kinds of endings, good and evil, right? Well, wrong. Like before, there are only two endings – good and bad. It's just that to get the good one, we're supposed to finish the game on a high difficulty [i]and[/i] choose “good” during the final level, while clearing high difficulty and choosing “evil” will... still give you a bad ending.
The game does that a lot, actually. Inventing the rules when there's absolutely no need for that. Like, there's that part in which the game tells you, “STOP!” And not because it's suddenly a [b]Hammer Time[/b], but because it decided to invent a deadly fire barricade. And we're, like... warned now or something? Because such stuff... never happened before? Imagine [b]Half-Life[/b] saying, “STOP! There's a headcrab behind that corner! He's gonna chew your head off, man!” I mean, [i]what the heck?![/i] Something like that is so-o-o out of place! I'm sure thankful that the game saved me from a cheap death, but... if devs were aware of the problem with their level, then... I mean, I know it's crazy, but [i]CHANGE THE F*CKING LEVEL DESIGN MAYBE?![/i]
And the funniest thing is – there was no reason for the story this game's trying to tell. At all. [b]Redemption[/b], despite all of its flaws, made a conclusion for what we had and that was it. And yes, it had [b]Bill[/b] from [b]Resurrection[/b], too. No, he didn't contribute much, but there was no reason for that! His appearance was more than enough! Ye-e-et they've decided to go into details and made the whole game out of it. Because obviously, everybody cares about that [b]Bill[/b] fella (spoiler: [i]not[/i]).
So yeah. Even though both [b]DreamCatcher[/b] and [b]JoWooD[/b] were no more, the evil persisted. Even under the new publisher, we've got yet another “final nightmare”. Thankfully, this time that was really it. End of the road for old-school [b]Painkiller[/b] on its original engine. Which... is the only good thing I can say about this release. It's actually so shady that I don't even know who made it. The credits list people from the [b]Eggtooth Team[/b] (people behind [b]Painkiller: Redemption[/b]) for the story, and yes, “cutscenes” look exactly the same, but at the same time, we've got somebody called [b]MED-ART[/b] responsible for the levels, and the corporate footprints lead... nowhere. It looks like a shady nobody from Eastern Europe, but you know what? It doesn't matter. What matters is that it actually shows the level of production we're dealing with here. Do you really need some of [i]that[/i] in your life? While you can play, like, any other game from Steam? Thought so.
