My SP Review

[iQue]

CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

So I finished the game just yesterday and I thought I'd make a post with what I think seeing as there are very mixed opinions of the actual gameplay. I played through the game in maybe 10 hours on the Insomnia difficulty, I will get back to that later. I might have mixed up a few parts of levels or whatever but I didn't focus on just retelling the story of the game.

So first things first, the intro "cutscene" is long but pretty to look at and the reader does a good job I think. Infinitely better than the god awful cutscenes in the original Painkiller that were just embarrassing to watch and only slightly less interesting than what you'd find in Overdose.

So then you get to the compass where you start the first level and the first thing that strikes me is how familiar it is. And by that I mean familiar in a good way. So I load the first level and boy, it takes some time, but still fairly reasonable. I really like how the angel talks to you and makes it feel a bit more personal than Painkiller and Overdose. The very first room of enemies spawning in gives a good taste of what's to come (especially with the awesome music), but it falls flat a little bit. The enemies that spawn in the room in front of you are ridiculously stupid, will get stuck on the pillars and seem to be unable to figure out how to navigate a stairway or jump over a brick laying on the floor. Mild disappointment follows as I continue through the level. The tunnels below the cathedral are really cool and really gives a feeling of dwindling down to purgatory or whatever - but it's a bit long and the enemies constantly respawning in makes it more of a hassle than it should be. Walking up the turning stairway is really cool as well, but a bit long. More enemies respawning in, more bad AI but some new weapons (well, reused really) makes it a little bit more fun. The final "boss" fight is ridiculous as you only really have to stay in the wooden stairway and the monster can't hurt you. Yay. Overall I really enjoyed the level though, but some flaws were making me a bit anxious about how the rest was going to be.

Second level, the forbidden valley. Mkay. First thing that makes me a bit pissed is the performance, like whaaa? I have a 8800 GTS card and can barely get 30 FPS? I can run Crysis better, this level and water reflections in general need heavy optimisation. The environment around the church look great though, except for objects in the distance clipping so it looks a little weird. Running around the graveyard, bla bla, killing lots of crap constantly respawning in again (seriously I just want to look around a bit, pretty please?) and then walking over this bridge thing. Killing lots more bad guys, and I'm getting a feeling of enemies being placed there in a little uninspired fashion. Way too many of those big brown things that I can never remember the name of.

Then you reach the big stone block structure in the middle of a valley, with lots of megahealth on top, more enemies respawning in (sigh)... and then you reach the big gate, which is obviously closed, so I try to make my way back. Just as another crapload of enemies spawn in, the angel chick starts to talk to you again and I have no idea what she's saying, leaving me a little clueless as of what to do. After about 15 minutes of looking around at the badly clipped surroundings (sharp edges between the mountains and the fog is a big no-go) I finally find this little gate to an underground tunnel in the middle, doh. I think it's pretty safe to say that this is the most fun part of the level, killing some drunks and a couple of knights or whatever there was. Some nice visuals as well, and great FPS for a change. Then you battle this big dog that ends in a little bit of disappointment because he gets stuck on this wooden thing and I can just spam stakes at him until he's dead. Boring. The cutscene comes way too early and interrupts the fight (even though I wasn't fighting much), which is boring.

Level three then, big valley level that I can't remember the name of. The first part is just boring, there's the same waterfall texture bug as in the demo which makes me slightly disappointed. Enemies spawning in everywhere and I'm honestly getting a bit tired of it because on these narrows strips of soil you can walk on it means you're going to back off a lot. Dull and a bit boring. Then when you've walked over the bridge at the top and passed the wooden spiral things get a bit more fun, well at least until you've passed the water mill. I went looking for some secrets and it was pretty fun, but the gatling gun guys doesn't fit in at all. One thing that annoy me a lot is that every time you go looking for secrets you're just going to make more enemies spawn and the less than impressive AI just makes it not very fun most of the time. The secrets themselves are fairly well placed though. The church part at the very end is fun, but it's almost too easy to just make the enemies spawn, spam some nades and hide until everything have blown up.

Level four, the haunted city! A pretty decent level, but not without its flaws. Not going in to too much detail, but small narrow streets + enemies respawning around every corner gets old pretty fast. Many times when you're jumping up on something (many times even small) you can see the end of the map and this is boring because it reeks of the map not being polished, might just as well place a wall there to block it off. AI is not very impressive yet again and will get stuck on the smallest of things that completely breaks the immersion. It's a shame. Before you fight the spider-like miniboss you come up against like 6 of these huge troll things and yet again it's just boring because the get stuck between these two pillars and I can just spam them to death. So I fight this big spider thing later on and at first I'm surprised that it doesn't do anything against me and it's down on 25% HP when it attacks me for the first time and ouch, it hurts. But it's still wayyy too easy to just spam it from a distance. That's a commonly occuring flaw with Resurrection, many times you'll just have to stay out of range to kill something easily without having it even getting close to attacking. It's not like L4D where you kill a zombie from a distance and the rest will take notice and hunt you down, no in PK:R they just stand there watching their buddies get obliterated by shurikens and lightning. A bit boring.

The big cannon wielding monsters are awesome - at first, that is until you realise that they are dumb as bricks and all you need to do is stay out of range. It feels so unnecessary. I'd much rather have much less of those, easier to kill but that actually attack you. Then you get to the lighthouse, kill some crap in the stairs and get to the top when you hear the angel say something about a huge beast outside - that I never even got to see a glimpse of as the level ended right there. What the hell? Did you fail to add something or did you just mess up the angels speech? VERY disappointing ending to this level never the less, but I enjoyed it overall even if it was very long and drawn out. Would have liked to see some bigger variety in the city structure as everything pretty much looks the same now.

The hangar, well thank god it was short because I fail to see the fun in this level. You get a new weapon - it's pretty cool - but not unique in any way other than the secondary fire and I really wished you would have come up with something a lot more unique. This level is just plain boring.

Now I've been writing for too long so I'm just gonna say that the last part leaves a lot to be desired, both in terms of aesthetics, gameplay and enemy variety. It feels forced and isn't fun in any way. The only part of the game I truly hated and the end leaves a lot to be desired. The stranded submarine was pretty much the only thing that I thought was even remotely close to being cool.

The game is far from stable and will crash sometimes from completely random things like just from walking on an empty street, and sometimes when loading saves.

Big kudos for the music though. It's truly awesome, just the right mix between metal parts and ambient tracks through-out the whole game. Well done.

So all in all,

+

• Decent level design in the first levels
• Cool secret areas
• Familiar weapons
• Nice cutscenes and angel dialogues
• AWESOME MUSIC, really.

-

• Performance issues with a still very respectable gaming PC
• Horrible AI (worse than the original or Overdose)
• Uninspired enemy spawns, and wildly mixing enemy types
• Unexpected crashes through the most random things
• Some missing textures and other minor graphical bugs
• Long loading times

I appreciate the alternative approach to the painkiller series but it falls short a bit. If I were to grade this game from a scale of 1 to 10, I think maybe a...

5/10

..is in order. With some patching and bug fixing you can definitely get it a lot higher. Keep up the work developers, and please don't release a game in this bad shape again. I don't know who to blame, Homegrown or Jowood, but it's just embarrassing. Good luck.

[malcolmx]

you gave it quite a high score, but it's a very good review

the best levels to me are the forbidden valley to the end of the town, the middle part of the game.

this is because PK are very good at designing spooky graveyards/ churches/ monastries and old towns, in fact; anything that looks dark and gothic.

but maps like the end one are a disaster, the end map shocked me when i first saw it, i thought ``f****** Hell, look at the brightness, what the hell has gone wrong here``

the first map was bad too, too many garish colours/ lighting inside the cathedral.

the best maps in any game that i've ever seen, are in the 1st Painkiller, they're awesome.

a future PK needs that type of high quality, highly detailed map, ( city on the water, Palace, Babal etc) my guess is that the developers couldn't be bothered with Resurrection and this really shows

i like the huge openworld middle game areas, a bit like Far Cry, but these areas need to be littered with huge castles, large villages etc..... something to break the boredom. Painkiller might work if it was set on a vast Devil's Island, a Gothic hellish version of Oblivion or Risen, loads of different places to visit.

because for PK to survive, the next game needs a huge budget.

[iQue]

Originally Posted by malcolmx

you gave it quite a high score, but it's a very good review

I wanted to be a little nice. And I enjoyed playing the game even with some glaring flaws (well, didn't enjoy the last level) so I guess my score reflects that. MP is fun and once it stops crashing it should be great, lol.