Why you didn't get points for headshots in Painkiller

Title Why you didn't get points for headshots in Painkiller
Author Tom Chick
Posted in Games
When April 23, 2013

Adrian Chmielarz is one of the founders of People Can Fly and the lead designer of Painkiller, one of the greatest shooters ever created because it's also one of the smartest shooters ever created..

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I think playing games is intrinsically rewarding. I don't understand this trend to offering wide-open mechanics and then punishing the player for not playing in a prescribed way.

In some of the later Assassin's Creed games you are challenged to get 'full synchronisation', maybe by remaining undetected. Why abandon the carefully designed phases of gameplay post-detection (escaping, fighting)? Aren't they part and parcel to the flow of AC's gameplay? They complete the 'loop' that makes the game so playable. These objectives tend to be optional, but they're still tied to rewards (in the case of GoW:J an entire bonus campaign). The game is undermining its own smart, dynamic gameplay systems by asking you take a single route through.

Every action in Gears of War is rewarding because it represents decision making. The locust cleaver sword is a hilarious and awesome weapon to use in a pinch, but when everyone's full gun is arbitrarily swapped for a cleaver, along with a line of dialogue justifying this logic/physics defying event, I feel I'm being denied the full breadth of gameplay (and all potential 'watercooler moments') and being forced to play the worlds most rudimentary melee combat game.

I know I should just opt out, but seriously, an entire bonus campaign? And who doesn't want to be 'fully synchronised?' It sounds important.

I think the much more interesting part of that interview was the discussion of what Bulletstorm 2 would have been. Goddamn but I love Bulletstorm and I truly grieve for its unborn sequel. OK sorry, I can't really engage in Internet hyperbole with a straight face so: I really wish I could play Bulletstorm 2.

Correction:
"Just put bullets on the target in [the] fastest and most consistently reliable way"