Dreamkiller

It's fun, but the fun is short lived. Dreamkiller is a copy-cat game that tries to emulate Serious Sam but places Sam in a cube.

Good ideas, mediocre implementation. There's a lot of blood, a solid story and well done cut-scenes. Dreamkiller tries to be different, but in the end it's just short-lived fun for players who enjoy games like Painkiller.

Psychonauts did brain-delving better. Serious Sam did campy horde-killing better. For this price, you could buy both. Twice. [Christmas 2009, p.111]

Dreamkiller is, through and through, a budget game. The visuals are colorful but look decidedly old, the action is as shallow as it gets in a modern shooter, and the sound effects lack oomph. The premise is neat, and some of the enemy designs are legitimately awesome. But if you've been dreaming of some old-fashioned twitch shooting, you should return to the old standbys and let this sleeping dog lie.

Try as they might, none can’t clear the bar that was set by Painkiller. Left to its own devices, without People Can Fly’s support, Mindware Studios created but a pale imitation. Some people can’t fly, indeed.

The game's spectacular premise is ultimately unfulfilled. What might have been a truly eye-opening, perspective-shattering trip through the battlefields of a tortured psyche is merely a rehash of everything we've been through in the Painkiller series.

If the creation of a boring and ugly looking corridor shooter was intended, we can just applause this to be a plan the is 120% achieved. [Dec 2009]