Line #49 YMMV/Painkiller


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7	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Apparently, [[Literature/ArsGoetia Belial]] is a half-angel/half-demon who likes to [[VideoGame/DukeNukem wisecrack]] at his enemies.
8	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Oh very much, the only thing to make it more metal was to add the Music/JudasPriest song of the same name.
9	* AntiClimaxBoss: Once you realize what you're supposed to do to kill him, Lucifer turns out to be a pathetically easy PuzzleBoss who can be killed in just a few seconds.
10	** GlassCannon: Despite being killable in just a few seconds with just 2 shots, Lucifer's attacks do massive damage and he can kill you in just a couple hits if you don't know what you're supposed to do to harm him.
11	* CatharsisFactor: As [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] said, "the best way to blow off steam is to blow off someone's nadgers".
12	* [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Crowning Moment Of Awesome]]: In the last boss fight, [[spoiler: you fight Lucifer in the middle of a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION.]]
13	** Hell, [[OneManArmy Daniel]] [[TheJuggernaut Garner]] is practically the '''physical embodiment of pure badass'''
14	* DemonicSpiders: Two most notable examples: the electricians in the Studios level from ''Overdose''. Skulls (skull-headed punks with shotguns) from the original game are also very painful to deal with.
15	** Make that three, with the voodoo priests in the penultimate level of ''Battle Out of Hell'' being worse since they're unfreezable. That, and the voodoo priests have an unavoidable attack in the form of damaging you via their voodoo dolls.
16	* FirstInstallmentWins: The first game is by far the most respected by fans and critics.The [[MissionPackSequel first expansion]] got a [[SoOkayItsAverage lukewarm reception]], and everything else is considered to have chronic {{sequelitis}}.
17	* GameBreaker: With the right combination of cards, you can have the approximate equivalent of a Demon Morph at your disposal, to be used whenever you need. Three times.
18	** It gets better: in Battle out of Hell, with the right combination of cards, you can have the actual demon morph on steroids whenever you need it. Three times.
19	** One of the Tarot cards in ''Painkiller: Black Edition'' lets you enter demon mode every 50 souls instead of every 66. Seeing how there's around a 100 enemies every level it's a lot easier to fight large battles.
20	* GoddamnedBats: Bones (three-foot-tall, armless skeletons) are fast, hard to hit, and leech souls from your Demon Morph bar when they get close.
21	* GoddamnedBoss: [[FinalBoss Lucifer]] isn't very dangerous, but he's a very odd PuzzleBoss who you first have to get into "demon morph" form by killing 66 monsters, at which point you have about 30 seconds to beat him. The fight with him is very much an UnexpectedGameplayChange: not only does he have no health bar, it's really hard to figure out what the hell to even ''do'' [[spoiler: You're supposed to press the fire key to push the meteors that fall from the sky into him, but this is both counter-intuitive, and the only time you can tell it's doing anything is if he falls to his knees or just falls over dead (as he only has 200 hp, but it's really hard to tell when you're actually damaging him.]] If you take too long, you go out of demon mode and have to kill another 66 people to get another try, meaning it's best to just save right before getting 66 kills and reload if you fail.
22	* ItsShortSoItSucks: ''Resurrection'': '''Six levels''' for '''thirty dollars''' does not make a good value.
23	** ''Hell & Damnation'' effectively cuts half of the original game's levels. The fact that the levels were cut in order to sell them as DLC made a ''lot'' of people angry.
24	* IronWoobie: Daniel. Oh, sweet merciful lord, Daniel. Poor guy can NOT catch a break.
25	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: Every single time the exit portal opens at the end of each level.
26	** The shotgun is one of the most satisfying weapons to use for the sound ''alone''.
27	* {{Narm}}:
28	** The opening cinematic and the cruel irony of Catherine [[DiedOnTheirBirthday mentioning that the day is her birthday right before she dies]] in a [[SurpriseCarCrash freak car accident]].
29	** [[https://youtu.be/OxPtcawzKU8?t=2m23s Daniel's reaction]] to [[spoiler: Eve's soul being taken by Death]].
30	* NightmareFuel: The aforementioned [[AbandonedHospital Asylum]] and [[OrphanageOfFear Orphanage]]. [[IntendedAudienceReaction We cannot stress this enough.]] It's like [[VideoGame/ThiefDeadlyShadows Shalebridge Cradle]] lite.
31	** To give you a good idea about how ''frakking scary'' the Asylum is, one half of the enemies are zombies without hands or feet that leap at you from across the room if you don't kill them fast enough, the other half are giant, screaming, glowing Frankenstein things that pop out randomly from doorways and rooms, and an extra 1% are ghosts that phase in and out of walls at random and are invincible. Keep in mind the level's challenge is to only use the Painkiller, either forcing you to launch it and lose any melee options for a good amount of time or charging up and slicing said horrifying monstrosities up...for a better idea see [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maksFc5LJ0I these]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEgXo9_md3E&feature=related two]] videos.
32	*** Those Frankenstein things are actually straitjacketed patients undergoing pretty extreme electric shock therapy. And the noise they make is muffled screaming. [[NightmareFuel Yeah.]]
33	* NightmareRetardant:
34	** ''[[http://bd.baldurk.org/573#title Animal Farm]]'' in ''Overdose''. So it's a creepy farm-cum-slaughterhouse, sure... but then you're attacked by suicide-bombing demon chickens, cyborg cows in bondage gear, reanimated butchers with sawblades and cow heads hanging on their neck, and find bloody scribbles on the walls reading "please i'll be a vegetarian" and "i'll join PETA"... and THEN the level segues into a fast food restaurant named ''[[{{Pun}} Last Food]]'' with a host of clowns attacking you. And this was supposed to be scary?
35	** To a lesser extent, ''Looney Park'' in ''Battle Out Of Hell''. It has the same ridiculous clowns as Animal Farm (though the change of setting makes them less ridiculous), and the overly "gruesome" amusement park rides are [[RefugeInAudacity too audacious to be scary]]. The [[FlatWhat poisonous human-popcorn hybrid monsters]] and [[LuckBasedMission tedious Tarot]] [[PacifistRun Card challenge]] don't help.
36	* ScrappyMechanic: One thing that almost ''everyone'' agrees on is that it takes ''way'' too long for souls to emerge from the corpses of slain enemies, and if you don't collect them, they disperse way too quickly, meaning a lot of time spent sitting around the cooling corpse, twiddling your thumbs while you wait for the soul to appear.
37	* SequelDifficultySpike: ''Painkiller: Hell & Damnation'' is noticeably harder than the original game, especially the earlier levels. There are even more enemies, and the earlier levels now contain EliteMooks instead of simply waves of cannon fodder.
38	* {{Sequelitis}}: Everything after ''Battle out of Hell'' is widely seen as terrible. While ''Hell & Damnation'', is generally considered better than the post-''Battle out of Hell'' games, a ''lot'' of people were miffed by the developers cutting out half of the original game's levels and selling them as DLC.
39	* SoOkayItsAverage: There's nothing really wrong with ''Battle out of Hell'', an expansion pack that doesn't try to be anything but; it simply [[ToughActToFollow isn't as good as the original]].
40	** ''Hell & Damnation'' also got this reception. Coming on the heels of the universally despised ''Resurrection'', it was acknowledged as being a vast improvement over the latter gameplay-wise, yet it was also heavily criticized for cutting out a huge chunk of the first game's levels so that they could be sold as DLC.
41	* ThatOneLevel:
42	** [[GloriousMotherRussia Leningrad]] in ''Battle Out of Hell''. Squads upon squads of DirtyCommunist zombies, all of whom have hitscan weapons and deadly accuracy. And if they're not zombies, they're [[TankGoodness tanks (plural)]], [[DamageSpongeBoss which can almost take]] '''[[MightyGlacier more]]''' [[MightyGlacier damage as they can give back out.]] And that's not even counting the [[DeathFromAbove airstrikes]] the [[EliteMook Commisars]] can call in...
43	** The original ''Painkiller'' has ''Snowy Bridge'' for its sudden DifficultySpike (waves of ninjas and samurai that are much bigger than previous levels) and forced sniping sections (in a game with no real sniping weapon) with the stake gun and it's arcing shots. The level is also extremely long on top of being the game's ice level and the card's requirement will make you look up a guide on how to get all of the 6 treasures. At least the card you get is nice, as it drops the demon mode requirement from 66 to 50, much easier to reach.
44	** ''Docks'' in the same game is this for enemies that shoot fast-moving, hard-to-see projectiles in tight alleyways and take a beating and several spots with hefty, unavoidable fall damage. The Skulls are the worse of the bunch as they can blow up their heads to become temporarily invincible and are immune to the shotgun's freeze attack. At least the card is easy to get as all you have to do is enter Demon Morph mode three times, something you will try to do.
45	** The forest level in ''Painkiller'' creatively called "Forest", accessible only in [[HarderThanHard Trauma Difficulty]], has no health pickups, a horde of enemies thrown at you right from the start, and one secret is particularly ludicrous. (Keep in mind that you can't quicksave in Trauma) Also, the card condition prohibits you from using black tarot cards, which certainly doesn't help matters. On the plus side, the level is blissfully short and the card it gives, "Divine Intervention", has pretty nice as it makes any cards you place free.
46	** ''Dead Marsh'' in ''Overdose'', for its near-impossible melee-only card condition (in a level filled with insta-death pits, flying monsters and tentacles that can hurt you even before its animation plays out).
47	* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: Virtually '''everything''' in Resurrection is copied and pasted from ''Painkiller'', ''Battle Out Of Hell'' and ''Overdose'', except for ''one'' new enemy type (available in three sizes!) and ''one'' new weapon (essentially the Bolt Gun from ''Battle Out Of Hell'' with a reskin). At least the guys who made ''Overdose'' were creative enough to make some new enemies and remodel the guns...
48	** And then in ''Redemption,'' all the levels in the game are just multiplayer levels from the original Painkiller, with tons of monsters added.
49	* ToughActToFollow: The entire series got worse and worse after the first game, as each of the differing developers that followed after People Can Fly ignored(or simply didn't understand) the subtleties and blatancies that made the original Painkiller ''so good''. As a [=GameSpot=] review for Resurrection puts it:
50	-->''"While the original game is still a treat for old-school shooter fans who won't let go of DOOM, all of the expansions and stand-alone add-ons have been pretty much atrocious. Let's hope that Painkiller: Resurrection is the last nail in the coffin."''
51	** Many players felt that even the first expansion, ''Battle Out of Hell'', which was also developed by the original developers, [[SoOkayItsAverage wasn't quite up to par]] with the original game's material, mostly because the expansion pack consisted entirely of levels and weapons that were previously cut from the original game due to time constraints or quality control. To put things into perspective, People Can Fly spent almost three years working on ''Painkiller'' alone, and ''Battle Out of Hell'' was released six months later.

Context YMMV / Painkiller