By Brad Russell
Painkiller for the iPad is a port of an entertaining PC game from a few years ago, beloved for its fast-paced action and gore. Aside from the fact that the story is garbage to begin with, its not important anyway. Youre essentially dropped in a narrow and poorly textured corridor and all you know is that your melee blade gun craves undead.
Im a gamer who gets seasick after getting lost in narrow corridors in first person shooters - when I reach a dead end Ill need to make progress or Ill get nauseated after a few minutes. In this game I was getting queasy after maybe 30 seconds I kid you not, and I had been playing Crysis 2 for a while, so it wasnt a freak occurrence. But I stomached the sensation and played the entire level at hand.
Yes, there was just one level to play as of the time of this review. It was a long level, and there are four difficulties, but the game lasts about 15 minutes played start to finish. That isnt the biggest problem though, because many of us wont play games for very long anyway, and most iOS games are one-shot plays. But many of us wont play this game for very long anyway. No, the biggest compliant is everything else.
The textures are horrible, for everything, so this game is a huge pain on the eyeballs. Attacks can go through walls. Health drops from every enemy because the controls are imprecise and make it near impossible to avoid being hit. There is an auto-assist to help aim, but it looks awkward to shoot out of a gun at five to ten degree angles from the line of the barrel. And worst of all, there is a strange auto-center feature whenever you move. This means that to aim or look properly you would need to stop, but this conflicts with the fast-paced nature of the action.
I would assume there would be further levels added, but they will need to add more than more length to this game. There are further complaints to be registered, such as the final boss taking 300 rockets or so, but this game does its job of endorsing painkiller medication, because you will need some after.
Final Rating: 10%
