I never played the original, except for a…demo? shareware version? So for $10 I got it.
Some of the levels are really nice, like the haunted hotel clearly inspired in The Shining. I recommend to use the custom difficulty, to really hone how to play it: because the monks are a pain in the ass so lowering the acc is a godsend.
I finally got bored of Blood. The first two episodes were good, but the third Episode unsold me on the game. Except for the Hospital level, it’s a series of boring levels, with bland design (grey/redsih city, industrial areas, sewer areas, still more gery), and confusing layout. In some parts I got stuck because the damn switches were gery and barely visible. A pity, because they were capable of doing much better as some of the other levels shown in the first two episodes.
Beyond the level design, the game also seems to lose steam around this part, because the enemy repertoire stops having new additions. You have the instahit cultists, the melee guys (zombie, fat zombie, fish man), the small things (rats, spiders, hand), the gargolye which in the end it’s just another melee enemy, the hellhound and the wraith. I feel as if the game needed 4-5 more enemy types.
The strongest point of the game was the weaponry. The flare gun is a very nice starting weapon with a cool twist, the shotgun and tommy weapon a well done, solid workhouses which is precisely what you want for your main weapons in a FPS, the dynamite gives the game a distinct feeling, because in other shooters explosive weapons are rarer and here they give you tons of it (but you may blow yourself, and need time to throw it at a distance), and the rest is also good (flame spray can, voodoo doll, etc).
Painkiller was slow, and the entire premise was based around slamming the doors shut in a small arena and spawning wave after wave of mobs. I hate that. (I also hate Serious Sam)
Also the weapons kind of sucked and none of them stood out and were memorable, unlike Blood.
Clearly you weren’t bunnyhopping enough. Painkiller was way better than Serious Sam; the bosses and most of the expansion levels sucked ass, though. Shoutout to The Pit, which was awesome.
I noticed a 50% off Blood coupon in my Steam inventory, now, the same discount that GOG is offering. I guess the fact that I prefer cheevos to DRM-free games shows the extent to which I have come to accept my shackles.
Was Painkiller tr game where the first our was spent kiting knights in tiny graveyard arenas? And then the second level was some.kind of plague town, with the boss being some kind of flying witch? And you had a stake gun?
If so: that game sucked.
Edit: I just went to check if I owned any painkiller games on Steam and it turns out they’re all on sale
Painkiller had my favorite weapons in a first person shooter. It’s probably still my favorite, as I don’t think much has topped it. The first was a shotgun that had a freeze ray as the secondary fire. The second was a stake gun with a grenade launcher as the secondary. The third was a rocket launcher with a chain gun as the secondary fire. And the last was a shiroken firing gun with lightning as the secondary fire. The weapons were awesome!
I think Doom 2’s supershotgun is probably still my favorite, but those Painkiller weapons come after that.
Serious Sam had its highlights for sure. I enjoyed most of First Encounter, but it tended to oscillate between very easy and very hard. Second Encounter added the sniper rifle I think? That was pretty satisfying. Painkiller had a certain something though, with what it did with its cards. So you’re trying to get through that Zombie town only using the stake gun so you can get the card for that level, that is the kind of specific objectives that made Painkiller extra good for me. It was like lightning in a bottle though. I hated the first expansion, and then one of the sequels that I tried. It never quite captured the fun again.
I played the original Blood back when it came out. I made it quite a ways through it, but never finished because IIRC it was getting obscenely difficult.
So now, with 25 more years of FPS experience, I’ve decided to try it once again, this time with the Fresh Supply version.
And wow. That first level is just classic FPS level design done to perfection.
My intent here was to quickly get through the game, but after I finished that first level, and the end-level stat screen popped up and told me I’d only found 6 out of 11 secrets, I was like, “What? I missed five?..Five?” I had to start over and try again. And this time I found 6 and missed 5. The same five, apparently. I have scoured that level. It’s a tiny level. The only secret that I can see that I missed visually is that second graveyard area I can see through that little window with bars on it. Other than that, I have no clue where the others are. I’m probably just not blowing up enough walls or something. I’m becoming obsessed with this secret-finding aspect. But at this rate, I’ll never finish this game.
I wonder if the best retro shooters might be the ones that were actually state-of-the-art in their day.
How are you approaching the levels in terms of difficulty and reloading?
I booted it up from the first level and started playing at the middle difficulty (3 out of 6, I think, so a notch below midway). I keep dying as I figure out the weapons and enemies, but I’m not sure if I would be better served a) saving more often, b) lowering the difficulty, or c) starting over at the beginning of the level and treating each section as a challenge to learn and get through. I’ve been doing c) so far, eschewing the usual save/reload dance in favor of replaying until I “solve” the encounters.
Also, whoa, a third-person view! Not sure it’s worth losing sight of those awesome weapon animations, but it’s an interesting alternative.