Painkiller: Resurrection

The game is fun. But the maps are so bad. even for 2009 this is 0/10 map design. A lot of times I got no clue where to go. These trash maps make it a challenge to find the next checkpoint. The game crashed a lot, and sometimes i find myself in a spot where i can't move anymore. I can't believe that at the end of the game i get asked to play these trash maps again on the highest difficulty too see the "real" ending. Hell no, i watched the real ending on youtube. Never ever i play these maps again.

Playing Resurrection had me longing for the good old days of Overdose again. Overdose may have been unforgivably buggy; inexplicably long loading times together with frequent crashes artificially extended its play time by a factor of 2 at least, but it was admirably creative. Every level had a different theme, with distinct textures, props, and even enemy designs.

Resurrection is more stable, on my PC at least, but the levels are depressingly uninspired: gigantic, sprawling expanses of gray and brown, littered haphazardly with generic props from the base game. Enemies either trickle in from random seeming spawn points in the distance, or they spawn right in from of you: popping into existence and draining your health instantly without even the courtesy of a visual or aural cue that they're spawning in.

The Max Payne style graphic novel cut-scenes are cute at least. The VA for the protagonist "Bill" is doing his best Caleb impression, but instead of quoting Evil Dead movies, he's making a half-hearted "300" reference: "This is madness..." multiple times per level. 2009 was a different time I guess.

To call this game flawed would be an understatement, and yet... there is something strangely satisfying about finishing it. At least on Trauma difficulty (hardest difficulty). The game play is mentally traumatizing despite the fact that there are only six levels. The new protagonist in this game has Max Payne-style graphic novel cutscenes- he stood in front of a bus as C4 he planted to kill a bunch of mobsters was about to kill innocent civilians. Now he's in hell and he has to kill a bunch of demons to get out...

The game starts like a normal Painkiller game. It takes place in a church and you procedurally work through the other side of it, passing underground, killing all enemies to get to the next area. And then... the game betrays that premise. Level 2 is like an open world area where the good weapons are hidden in far off places where you are unlikely to reach them without exploring. You can technically run straight to the boss if you only know where to look for it, but many other hidden areas like graveyards and an entire underground section exist almost as red herrings as you search.

Level 3 is where the game starts to get bad, REALLY bad. You aren't really given enough ammo and you're supposed to climb a mountain. Walking into certain areas insta-kills you. It almost has a Dark Souls-like quality in that you want to memorize the route and just get there with as little of a headache as possible. Level 4 is probably the best level in the game, as it's a decrepit city that you are running through in a nonlinear fashion, passing through different houses, going into sewers, passing underground and finally reaching the beach to escape. I admire what the developers were trying to do despite failing at it.

Level 5 just places you in a hangar area where you are pretty much instakilled if you don't know what you are doing. This level introduces a new, overpowered weapon that shoots wooden stakes but also launches a canister that can be shot to make it burst into flames and obliterate everything. The enemies in this area will kill you immediately if you try to fight fair, but I discovered that if you run around the map they will, for no apparent reason, clump together in a mindless conglomerate ball that you can easily blow up and clear out in seconds.

Level 6 is a beach with wrecked ships where you mostly fight pirates. I like this level but it was pretty annoying trying to fight fairly. I killed about 250 enemies before I accidentally fell in the water and died. Occasionally, possibly as a means of clearing the games RAM usage, it will automatically just kill everything onscreen for you. If too many enemies populate the game will lag terribly, and this game suffers from the "fatal error" issue of the other Painkiller games along with just generally glitchy saving mechanics that are made worse by the fact that you can't save manually on the hardest difficulty.

If you manage to make it to the end of that horrific beach you are treated to a final boss fight. There is an alternate ending if you beat it on the hardest difficulty and I actually found this overall pretty satisfying which is why I am giving it a positive rating. Even though I only played this for seven hours there were many points wherein I thought it was going to be impossible to finish because the game was just creating an insane situation, particularly on levels 3 and 5. Being faced with a difficult challenge and overcoming it is more satisfying than not being challenged at all, and that is why, despite the countless ridiculous issues with this game, I give it a positive rating.

This game resurrected something all right, my desire to uninstall it after 15 minutes of walking through the same hallway again. This game is so aggressively broken, that the devs must have really felt the pain making it to leave it as is.

No need to waste an hour writing a review for this game.
It doesn’t deserve that much attention, and I’m stunned they even dared to release it.
This is a downright disaster in the franchise.

Yet, it started off okay.
The gameplay is the same as Black Edition or Overdose.
No changes there, but the formula is fun at its core.

Now, let’s move on to the stuff that pisses me off,
and there’s a ton of it.
In fact, that’s pretty much all there is.

Let’s start with the French translation, which is pretty half-assed,
and the voice acting, which is barely convincing.
But honestly, I don’t care too much about that—it’s just a minor detail.

Even for a 2009 game, the graphics on ultra are showing their age.
Let’s not forget this is a derivative of the first Painkiller from 2004.
On top of that, I was forced to switch to minimum graphics, which are abysmally ugly,
just to stop the game from crashing constantly because it’s so poorly made
(thanks to Childeric_Bantu for the tip).

The level design is an absolute disaster, no doubt the work of amateurs.
Even Lucifer himself couldn’t have churned out such garbage.

Collision bugs are everywhere.
Even after heavily patching my game (Patch #44 & Mega Fix Mod v2.0),
it didn’t make much difference.
I once found myself literally stuck in a level, unable to move,
but I managed to free myself using the stake launcher’s grenades.
I fell through maps multiple times, sometimes right at the spawn point.
I had to set the graphics to minimum to fix that.
But no matter what I do, Resurrection remains unplayable.

A resurrection, really? Far from it.
This abomination needs to crawl back to the depths of hell.
At first, I thought Painkiller Resurrection was just doing the bare minimum,
since it brings almost nothing new to the table.
Worse than that, this game is a total scam, an industrial catastrophe.
I’ve rarely seen games this badly made, despite my extensive gaming experience.
Every second is pure suffering—between the lag, freezes, bugs, and crashes.
This pseudo-game from Homegrown Games is a massive middle finger.
Don’t waste your time. Go play the classic from People Can Fly instead—
I’m obviously talking about Painkiller Black Edition.
Otherwise, Painkiller Overdose from Mindware Studios is pretty cool too.

Better than Overdose. Might prefer to have an overdose, though.

Tl;dr:
Good ish game with gamebreaking issues. Get on sale if interested.

Game seems interesting and feels painkillery. Weapons are now back to the original set from the first painkiller game. Enemies feel familiar, but fights feel more "tossed in here and there". Excellent voice acting, as always!

Cards are reduced to just a few but significant cards, and they might require a walkthrough to unlock. I paid far less attention to cards in this game than previous games.

I faced a bunch of problems, which is the main reason I put a "not recommended":
- Crashes
- Long loading times
- Enemies get stuck in walls
- Easy to get lost
- Easy to get softlocked

I kind of liked the parts that worked. But having to replay levels for dumb reasons all the time gets tedious.

It was an interesting idea of a Painkiller with a Max Payne storytelling. However, the level design is absolutely horrible and add-on is very broken. On the start of 4th level there are no textures so you almost instantly die. The game cannot be finished.

Very laggy. Not sure if I can recommend this one, even with possible fixes.

I would've absolutely loved this game as a child. Now, I am a little too old for it, but it is still fun to play if I'm in the mood for a classic shooter with banger music. It's definitely worth it in your library if you like the FPS genre even a little bit, and you can catch it on sale for $2.

It is fault of publisher to release game in such bad state.
Don't touch it unless you've patched it to 44 version and installed megafix from moddb.
After whole process it is a lot more enjoyable, but still worse than Overdose and much worse than OG Black Edition

Bullshit with buggy, mess. It's totally fucked up.
On the second level, I fall through the textures and that's it. You can't pass the game. Disgusting.

This game is a fucking mess, giant piece of shit, mega doodoo shit from an ass
6950xt, 5800x3d, not enough for this powerhouse of a game running on an engine from 2004 using assets from 2004
sucks ass, takes eons to load even on a gen4 nvme, big doodoo do not play this game
if you're lucky c01e04 will never load and spare you from this mess that YOU CANT EVEN ALT F4 OUT OF BECAUSE FUCK YOU

I can't even get through the first room...

You can get lost on the huge stages, for sure. But this is a much more faithful "sequel" than Overdose.
Personally, I liked it

Make no mistake, Painkiller: Resurrection is flawed. There are too many faults ranging from the game causing you to fall from the map to freezing whenever you bunny hop to skip certain areas within levels. Some level designs are well made while others cause you to go through tiny gaps or mountains filled with many rocks. The soundtrack features new combat and ambient music while some are retained from the previous game. Despite these flaws, I've had a thrill playing this game on its hardest difficulty. Its an honest game with no micro-transactions even though its short in length. I would rather play this than modern FPS games.

Hot buggy garbage compared to the rest of the titles in the PK franchise. Honestly, you can skip this one, unless you are a masochist like myself who has to complete everything. :/

+

Clunky, buggy, mess... effectively brokenware. The scant story was okay but, while the levels were thematically interesting and less disjointed than previous Painkillers, the level design was absolutely, game-killingly, horrendous. A boring, busted, slog... shame.

They went completely the other way with this mod (not calling them games anymore). Wide open areas with no sense of direction and randomly spawning enemies. While the atmosphere is more enjoyable and some of the secrets - challenging, it is still a frustrating experience. All of these Painkiller mods (Resurrection, Redemption, Recurring Evil) suffer from a severe lack of level design. You can tell they're fan-made. Stick to the original games (Black Edition + Overdose) and don't waste your time and money.

what were these goofballs thinking when they made the levels of this game