Painkiller: Overdose

Considering its budget pedigree, Overdose's $39.99 price tag may seem a bit steep. But for fans of mindless fun, it's worth every penny. [Jan 2008, p.88]

A fun and challenging game that is good to play for maybe a half an hour at a time. It’s an extremely intense game that provides several hours of entertainment.

Overkill is a high-octane thrill ride from beginning to end... or in other words, fun.

This stand-alone Painkiller expansion is pure, stupid fun, despite slow loads and an utter lack of innovation.

It's been a busy year for shooters, but even as everyone else tries to hybridize the genre, Overdose cleverly and creatively embraces its purity.

Ultimately, hardcore shooting fans with a taste for that semi-stupor brought on by incessant gunplay and bloodletting will devour what Painkiller has to offer and come back for seconds.

For a brainless shooter the price tag is a bit high, but at least you know exactly what you’re getting.

Everything, and I mean everything, from the ammo pickups littering the ground, to the lack of weapon reloading, to the super speed in which your character moves, to the silly side comments he’s always making, to the general lack of story, and even the random level themes make this feel like a freeware game I would have stayed after school to play in the computer lab.

Take a dated game engine and add in some dated, unrefined gameplay and you’ve pretty much got Painkiller: Overdose in a nutshell. The original was mindlessly fun, but Overdose is just mindless.

Painkiller Overdose is definitely for fans of the series. Frantic blasting action might not suit everyone but you can't really knock it until you've tried it.

Painkiller: Overdose’s strengths are as simple as its gameplay - you get to use cool guns to kill cool monsters. However, due to a myriad of shortcomings, the mindless killing of hell spawned demons won’t hold your attention for long.

Overdose gives the original 2004 game a new paint job along with new settings, but it's essentially the same game, which made extensive use of physics technology. Except, games since then matched and surpassed it, making it monotonous.

The Painkiller series has indeed overdosed, and should have been stopped after the first two games.

If Overdose was a free download, it would definitely be worth checking out, but at nearly-full priced $39, it is hard to recommend it, with so many truly awesome shooters on the shelves.

Overdose suffers most from its overall lack of polish. Had the levels and balancing received a bit more attention, this could have been another solid entry in the Painkiller series. There is still some mindless enjoyment to be had here, but the dated presentation and slow loading times conspire to spoil that too.

Overdose on the other hand is not worth playing unless you are a die hard fan of the original Painkiller and want to return to the series, it is playable but it felt more like a chore then a fun game.

Instead of fleshing out the most gore-filled and evil FPS series yet made, Mindware has instead managed to flog a dead horse. As a final insult, this is the most poorly performing version of Painkiller yet; it loads more slowly now than ever before, even with my updated hardware.

Overdose started life as a fan-made mod and it shows. While it's since gained official approval and funding, Counter-Strike this ain't.

Pointless but not worthless. [Jan 2008, p.74]

In the end, while the packaging blurb does boast six new weapons, forty new monsters, and sixteen new levels, Overdose doesn’t quite sustain the level of excellence that made Painkiller so popular.