After a brief flash of white, the color drains from the screen leaving only the enemies highlighted as orange blobs. Once you've amassed 66 souls, you enter a special mode where you can bend the fabric of the scenery. In addition to replenishing health, these glowing green glyphs are tabulated alongside of your enemy kill in a counter at the top of your screen. As you run through the game and litter the floor with the appendages of others, you'll notice that your enemies will pop after hitting the ground and yield green soul power ups. In Painkiller, things don't have to make sense, they just have to bleed and die. Here's a secret: enemies are vulnerable to explosions.

Mix in a few hundred shambling bodies and you've got a sloppy, gory mess on your hands, your legs, the ground, etc.

Now, picture a strange detachable metal ball at the end which you can shoot and stick into your targets and that remains connected to the weapon with a deadly yellow energy beam. This weapon looks like what you'd have in your hands if you took a weed wacker, removed the protective hood, added gigantic razor blades where the cutting wires were, and held it horizontally. We could also pull out the shotgun to pulverize enemies into a chunky red mist, or choose to switch to one of the most insane melee weapons we've seen in a while. In addition to firing stakes at super high velocities, the gun also features a grenade launcher as an alternate fire. For instance, there was a stake gun available to us in the Town level we played. Weapons in the Painkiller universe generally have two completely over the top functionalities. Through the levels we got a chance to try out four of the games weapons. In the demo we played through we got a change to trudge our blood soaked boots through three of the game's grime encrusted levels. The weapons are extremely violent and function effectively to dismember and shred your foes as quickly and messily as possible. Enemy designs are widely varied and often distractingly odd. The game is still a first person shooter that takes place in dark, twisting levels full of fire and scorched skies.

If you played or read about Painkiller when it was released on the PC in April of 2004, you'll find very little has changed since then.

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