Is it me, or does Painkiller just suck?

[HeadRusch]

Ok, I had played the demo for PK many a moon ago and recently picked it up dirt cheap, installed it, played through....and while the game is pretty at 1080p with AA and AF turned on...I can't help fighting the feeling that this game just flat out sucks...I want to like it...but...I dont :(

Its like......Quake......with high rez textures. And when I say Quake I mean....a small handfull of weapons, endlessly using the shotgun...spooky enemies that bumrush you....its a quakier version of Serious Sam. :p

Did this game garner big kudos because of this aspect or not? I'm currently fighting the big giant demon in the graveyard...have died around 300 times, and am basically ready to uninstall it (I dont even have hte desire right now to cheat my way through it).

Are the later levels really interesting/visually impressive? So far besides a couple of cool gothic looking cathedrals, the rest of the environments are either plain-jane catacombs type of things or fairly blaze' cemetaries....

Are there other interesting weapons coming up in the game???

[Richard713]

I really enjoyed Painkiller - but it is mindless shooting - your reference to Serious Sam is fairly accurate. I don't recall any boss figures being excpetionally difficult once you knew the trick.

Also, graphically speaking it is okay but nothing it has to offer is going to wow you. I remember seeing alot of flat looking textures that should have been more 3d.

[HeadRusch]

I guess its a case of my expectations....granted the game is a few years old, and its big push was its use of the HAVOK system for physics.

And yeah, the game uses no bumpmapping at all as far as I can tell......its all flat textures.

[borf]

for me all video games suck after the first 20 minutes. face it. there's only so much you can get out of a two dimensional screen. boring repetitive meaningles...i keep thinking something neat happens but its all the same. and A COMPUTER CAN BEAT YOU IF IT WANTS TO! i want to live in the MATRIX! if im going to get the life sucked outa me LET ME EAT a real steak *yum*


:D

[DaverJ]

You slay me HR! You are the only one I know to plop down thousands on your hardware and scour the bargain bins for ancient software. :D

[HeadRusch]

Hey, I remember hearing all this great stuff about it.....so I figured I'd drop the five bucks to try it :)

Dont blame ME if no better FPS's have come along lately!!! :D

Actually going through HL2 Episode 1 is next on my list.....at 1920x1080 it ran pretty bad on the 6800GT as I recall, I wasn't really pleased........

[DaverJ]

Dont blame ME if no better FPS's have come along lately!!! :D



True dat. It's one of the reasons I haven't gotten an upgrade itch for my PC in a long time. Vista somewhat satisfied that impulse anyway.

I'm back to messing with the new beta of the Daphne Laserdisk emulator... Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc. Old school always seems to come back around for me. :o

[HeadRusch]

True dat. It's one of the reasons I haven't gotten an upgrade itch for my PC in a long time. Vista somewhat satisfied that impulse anyway.

I'm back to messing with the new beta of the Daphne Laserdisk emulator... Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc. Old school always seems to come back around for me. :o

I've got those on the MAME cab...they were fun...for about..a day.

After hearing the attract mode for DL's announcement of "DRRRAAAGONS..LAIR...." for the umpteenth time, it was time to shut it down :)

DIdn't know there was a "new" version...what was wrong with the old version!?!?

[DaverJ]

I've got those on the MAME cab...they were fun...for about..a day.

After hearing the attract mode for DL's announcement of "DRRRAAAGONS..LAIR...." for the umpteenth time, it was time to shut it down :)

DIdn't know there was a "new" version...what was wrong with the old version!?!?

The new Daphne is a beta for version 1.0 which downloads, via torrent, updated cleaned official "Digital Leisure approved" versions of Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, Space Ace and Thayer's Quest. They are supposed to be the best SD versions of these games that have existed. The trick is... you must own the DVD-ROM or DVD-videos of the above games, even though the game doesn't really use the source material from the disk. But for these games no more Dap2DVD, framefiles and whatnot.

Speaking of Dragon's Lair -- the trailer for Dragon's Lair HD (coming soon on HD-DVD as we mentioned in the other thread) looks pretty impressive... sharp and in full 16:9! :cool:

[DrCrawn]

It is not you, Painkiller sucks. Serious Sam is a lot more creative and fun, but both are straight up plain jane shooters.

For $19.99, some of you should try Halo PC. The campaign is tremendously fun, but the online multiplayer action is unreal. Yes the game itself dates to the late 90s, but I don't care. It still looks incredible for its age. In terms of skill based action, very few FPS can even tough Halo PC for its depth. Literally I have played the game non-stop since I bought it in early 2004.

[HeadRusch]

Yeah..but...its ANIMATED..I mean, it doesn't improve with added resolution since the frames were hand drawn by Don Bluth's people :) The DL I have now on the mamecab is "good enough" for me.....that whole "owning the Digital Leisure" stuff...man thats funny :D

They put out like, what, 27 versions of those discs...first on CD...then on improved CD's....then eventually on DVD, but it wouldn't work on a PC. Then, they put out a PC version, etc, etc.

RE: Halo, I think I have my friends copy here somewhere...I played it on the Xbox and enjoyed it, but only went through once..not sure how I'd feel about it on the PC.

[JuiceRocket]

Did this game garner big kudos because of this aspect or not? I'm currently fighting the big giant demon in the graveyard...have died around 300 times, and am basically ready to uninstall it (I dont even have hte desire right now to cheat my way through it).

Are the later levels really interesting/visually impressive? So far besides a couple of cool gothic looking cathedrals, the rest of the environments are either plain-jane catacombs type of things or fairly blaze' cemetaries....

Hey HR. I was actually one of the MP beta-testers for PK, my name is in that lovely box you bought. Chalk up that extra 12 characters to add to the price. ;)

There were a few reasons that PK got the kudos, not that you (or I) agree with them. The oversized monsters, good visuals (at the time) that ran smoothly on most PCs, Havoc engine, and interesting weapons.

Hate to tell you, but there are only 5 weapons in the game. Most have alt fire modes, so in a way you've got 10... ;)

Nothing changes as you progress through the levels except for your new cards, new weapons, and more monsters. That's all you've got. It's kinda the opposite of Serious Sam theme wise, but content and gameplay wise it's exactly the same. Except in SS you had more open environments, PK tends to keep you in fairly tight quarters with a few exceptions.

Last but not least, PK somehow got put into CPL the year it came out. This drove up sales quite a bit, and got a good buzz going on for the game. With Fatal1ty, Xenon, Vo0, and some other pro players backing PK and competing with it a CPL, PK got a good name.

Of course, as we beta-testers had noted, there were quite a few things in the MP (and the SP) that needed some serious tweaking. Even after the patches, I think it was fairly obvious to almost everyone that PK wasn't a great game, and it was eventually dropped from CPL and lost it's online following. Take a look in the pub server list, tell me how many people you still see playing the game. It had no staying power, unlike CS, UT, RTCW:ET, etc.

Anyway, back to your SP experience. Yes, you do get to see some pretty cool environments later in the game. The question just revolves around if you want to keep playing the game for that long! :)

-JR

[HeadRusch]

I've been going through PK SP a little each night, just burning up time..mostly to see the new environments.....but after awhile being assaulted by 300 ninjas gets old :)

I have done a bit of cheating just to keep progressing........mostly I'm just checking out the environments, I guess its fun to play a fast moving shooter again that isn't as stupid as Serious Sam was.......half naked chicks in cutscenes help too ;)

[JuiceRocket]

I've been going through PK SP a little each night, just burning up time..mostly to see the new environments.....but after awhile being assaulted by 300 ninjas gets old :)

I have done a bit of cheating just to keep progressing........mostly I'm just checking out the environments, I guess its fun to play a fast moving shooter again that isn't as stupid as Serious Sam was.......half naked chicks in cutscenes help too ;)

I know what you mean, on both counts. It gets incredibly repetitive. You'll go into a room, it's quiet, there is 100 pieces of ammo laying around. You know that you're waiting to hit a trigger and all hell will break loose. Wait...am I talking about GoW or PK? :eek:

Good luck getting through the game. If anything, I thought that the bosses were fun to check out, especially since they were just so damned big.

You're making me want to dig and find my old disc, install it, and then give it a shot tonight. :)

-JR

[DaverJ]

Yeah..but...its ANIMATED..I mean, it doesn't improve with added resolution since the frames were hand drawn by Don Bluth's people :)

Animation was MADE for High Definition. I live for animation, CGI or especially hand drawn, in HD.

Sorry, I have a habit of hijacking threads. :o You can go back to talking about bargain bin FPSes and I'll try to find a place to discuss really bad Laserdisc games. :p

[HeadRusch]

Animation was MADE for High Definition. I live for animation, CGI or especially hand drawn, in HD.


"Dear Sanity, sorry its been so long since we last chatted, you see I have been busy making public statments that make me look crrrrrAAAZZZY!"

Animation never gets better the more rez the picture gets....theres no more information there to capture more pixels of!!! I dont want to see brush-strokes or eraser lines!


Sorry, I have a habit of hijacking threads. :o You can go back to talking about bargain bin FPSes and I'll try to find a place to discuss really bad Laserdisc games. :p

Oh you mean Lupin III? I always liked the intro to BEGAS BATTLE the best...or Mach III's attract mode...

[DaverJ]

Animation never gets better the more rez the picture gets....theres no more information there to capture more pixels of!!!

:eek:

Ummm.... I'm crazy? You realize I'm not talking about up-conversion here? I'm speaking of direct higher resolution transfers of artwork.

How can you be in this forum and suggest that HD does nothing to improve colors and sharp lines? :confused: Look for yourself (http://www.digitalleisure2.com/Trailers/DLHDwide.wmv) on than fancy monitor of yours.

I thought you of all people would have a deeper appreciation of animation, especially with your toy collection.


Oh you mean Lupin III?
That's Cliff Hanger to you, son. ;)

[HeadRusch]

:eek:

Ummm.... I'm crazy? You realize I'm not talking about up-conversion here? I'm speaking of direct higher resolution transfers of artwork.


Unless they re-do the animation cells entirely via computer in an ultra high resolution, you're talking about re-scanning what essentially is a painted panel of art. Now, just how much do you think that artwork is going to improve? Do you think the guy who painted it provided such detail that a high def scan will reveal anything but flaws?

We aren't talking about something that was rendered at an insane resolution to begin with, where there is detail upon detail in each panel background that only becomes visible as resolutions increase you know.....this is just hand-drawn animation from 1982 or 83....you can probably resolve all the detail in that animation on a standard low-rez arcade monitor!


How can you be in this forum and suggest that HD does nothing to improve colors and sharp lines? :confused:

Look for yourself (http://www.digitalleisure2.com/Trailers/DLHDwide.wmv) on than fancy monitor of yours.


Uh, Dave..that video does nothing but prove my point.....it looks identical in every way to every other version I've seen. There is no inherent improvement whatesoever except now its cropped widescreen and I can see tons of grain :P
The colors are still the same primaries, there is no magical new detail to be seen in Dirks belt texture, for example (as....it has none)...etc.

Dont know where the confusion is here....

Its the same reason I dont need to see the Transformers, or Star Blazers, or G-Force or any other animated show from before the year 2000 in HD...there is no more detail in those simple cartoons to be seen, only flaws to be exposed.


I thought you of all people would have a deeper appreciation of animation, especially with your toy collection.


I do, but I'm also a realist. HD does not improve everything. If there is detail in the source, thats one thing. A master negative for a movie that contains oodles of detail that is never seen even in 35mm prints that get sent to theatres....there is an improvement. But hand drawn animation doesn't really improve, since there is no missing detail in the source to begin with.

Its not like DL going to high def is going to reveal the texture on Dirk's tunic, or the metallic hammer marks on his skull cap....because the detail isn't there to begin with...some guy drew a metal helmet on his head, and another guy colored it in silver to look like metal with maybe a few black brush strokes here and there for detail....

IF you scan in a comic book into a PC, the picture doesn't get any better, all you do is scan in the dots that make up the picture....ie: you bring out the grain, which ruins the image.

IMHO of course. :)



That's Cliff Hanger to you, son. ;)

I call it "this game sucks" :)

[dub273]

I thought you of all people would have a deeper appreciation of animation, especially with your toy collection.FWIW... as an animator and animation enthusiast... I totally agree with you and definitely appreciate seeing Dirk and Daphne in high definition. I played the arcade Dragon's Lair over and over and over when I was a kid, and never have I seen the footage look as beautiful as it does in the HD trailer. The colors are deeper and richer than on any of the old arcade monitors, and the tiny details make a huge difference. To me it's not just an incremental improvement, but a must-have item for me.

Ironically, I don't think much of Don Bluth as an animator or a storyteller, but I'm really jazzed about seeing these hand-drawn frames in high def.

[HeadRusch]

I think you guys are really, really stretching here........the old HD Dilemma....are you seeing something better, or do you just want to see something better??

All I see is grain that I dont see on my MAME Cab....

[DaverJ]

are you seeing something better, or do you just want to see something better??


HR... maybe it's time for a trip to the eye doctor?

I understand your logic, but it's wrong. To follow your analogy, if you scanned a comic at 72dpi 640x480 and viewed it on a big display at 1080p, it would look soft and you would loose resolution of the source comic. However, the same comic scanned 300dpi at 1920×1080 and shown on the same HD screen, the picture would look sharper and you would see more detail in the drawing.

Nothing new was drawn for the comic, no magic pixels filled in or added detail, and that comic may have been drawn 50 years ago. But comparing the SD scan (640x480) to HD scan (1920×1080) would be night and day.

As for what's best for your MAME cab... I agree 100% -- stick to the SD for laserdisc games because LD is (was) SD.

[dub273]

I think you guys are really, really stretching here........the old HD Dilemma....are you seeing something better, or do you just want to see something better??Who wouldn't want to see something better?

Whether most people would notice it or not, there is a difference between seeing a hand-drawn Disney movie on a standard-def DVD... and seeing a hand-drawn Disney movie in its full-frame glory on film. I was skeptical of whether that would be true for Dragon's Lair until I saw the trailer for the restored HD-DVD version. There is more detail, more vibrance, and more life in each frame that you didn't see when it was crunched down to NTSC. And yes, there's grain, and it's lovely to behold.

I won't presume to judge someone who can't or won't see the difference, because I don't think a lot of people would. But you don't need to insult us by calling it "stretching" because that's not the case; we know better.

[HeadRusch]

HR... maybe it's time for a trip to the eye doctor?

I believe my eyes are O-K......however you are hooked on the moonshine, and your judgements are cloudy...


I understand your logic, but it's wrong. To follow your analogy, if you scanned a comic at 72dpi 640x480 and viewed it on a big display at 1080p, it would look soft and you would loose resolution of the source comic. However, the same comic scanned 300dpi at 1920×1080 and shown on the same HD screen, the picture would look sharper and you would see more detail in the drawing.


Let me try to explain to you why you are hopelessly wrong:

When we take a look at something in HD versus SD, we are seeing details in the original image that non-high-rez devices were unable to display. We see sharpness, we see detail in the distance. We find that we can read a streetsign that was otherwise just a smear of black lettering in the background of a filmed shot, that kind of thing. DVD let us see the pores in peoples skin....HD lets us see which pores are clogged.

But when you are talking about animation, you are talking about hand-drawn...with a pen...with ink...with colors. You aren't talking about detail that can't be resolved, because the detail isn't there. There is no improvement in the image. There is no detail in the objects that was inherently blurred away because the original laserdisc presentation couldn't resolve it...

Have you ever seen the Simpsons? Have you ever seen the simpsons in pillarboxed HD? IS there any difference? Of course not....its not like when you go to HD you're suddenly seeing detail in the hand-drawn image that you couldn't before. Lets take the admittedly hot princess here:

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/reviews/pc/dragons-lair-20th-anniversary/dragons-lair-20th-anniversary-2.jpg

Now..what do you expect to see in HD that you can't get in the normal SD version? Will you see even more sparklies in her gown? Will you be able to see every individual eyelash? Will her nipple be even pronounced??

hey...wtf man..I played this game when I was 11...this is like...pr0n...!!?

Anyhow, this is my point.....there's no added detail to be found in the image..its not like some animator drew 300 individual lashes, but you could only see "a clump of 5 lashes" or so because you only got to see it on a SD display. :p

If anything, you're going to see the grain of the image, which IMHO would be a DETRACTION.....I mean, yay that its coming out in widescreen (hopefully not just CROPPED widescreen), but as for the HD part I file that under "nothing to see here".

[dub273]

I believe my eyes are O-K......however you are hooked on the moonshine, and your judgements are cloudy...Dave's judgments aren't cloudy. They're simply the reflections of a knowledgeable enthusiast who likes to see hand-drawn works represented as closely as possible to their source.

Let me try to explain to you why you are hopelessly wrong: :rolleyes:

But when you are talking about animation, you are talking about hand-drawn...with a pen...with ink...with colors. You aren't talking about detail that can't be resolved, because the detail isn't there.The detail may not be so prominent in the foreground characters, but the backgrounds are absolutely brimming with little touches that make the images pop out of the screen. The bricks on the wizard's castle are more defined, the walls and corridors are much more lively, and the dragon's lair is brimming with baubles, coins, and other whatnot that are nowhere near as exciting on the SD version of the game. Daphne's sparkles do in fact look more defined and less artifact-y than they do on the DVD. It's not a quantum leap, but it is definitely more exciting and more than a worthwhile endeavor.

There is no improvement in the image.There is also none so blind as he who will not see.

[HeadRusch]

The detail may not be so prominent in the foreground characters, but the backgrounds are absolutely brimming with little touches that make the images pop out of the screen. The bricks on the wizard's castle are more defined, the walls and corridors are much more lively, and the dragon's lair is brimming with baubles, coins, and other whatnot that are nowhere near as exciting on the SD version of the game


The walls and corridors look more lively because of all the shimmering grain and mosquito noise you're seeing :D

Are you suggesting they magically added more coins and treasure to the scene, or that the hand-drawn coins which would be the size of doll-clothes buttons on the drawn page would somehow have even more "detail" to them now? "ooh look you can see that pile of coins wasn't perfectly lined up in the original animation and now jumps around a bit during each frame!!!". That kinda stuff?

Again..is this a GOOD or a BAD thing.....


Daphne's sparkles do in fact look more defined and less artifact-y than they do on the DVD.

http://www.throwtheword.com/uploaded_images/cat-shock-709002.jpg

<Smacks himself in face, pulls hand down face revealing gaping maw of disbelief at what he's reading>.....ok, whatever guys. Sometimes I think I see ghosts in the cemetary late at night..I am guessing this is a similar phenomenia :)


It's not a quantum leap, but it is definitely more exciting and more than a worthwhile endeavor.


Not doubting that, just kinda commenting on the end result. I cannot and will not subscribe to your blinding madness. :)

Show me the pics baby....show me this magical jump in visual WOWness that happens, cuz I'm not seeing it. I challenge you both, convert me, show me the error of my ways!

HR
<throws down gauntlet..which is no more detailed in SD version than gauntlet in HD version>

[dub273]

Show me the pics baby....show me this magical jump in visual WOWness that happens, cuz I'm not seeing it. I challenge you both, convert me, show me the error of my ways!Your mind is clearly already made up; I may as well try to convince someone who likes Coke that Pepsi is better.

I like my hand-drawn art to look as close as it can to the original hand-drawn cels and hand-painted matte backgrounds and analog-photo grain. I also prefer the full-size Calvin & Hobbes art more than I like the squashed down version that appeared daily in the Washington Post. You prefer your cartoons the way you saw them on TV. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not going to satisfy me or my HD display in the coming years.

[HeadRusch]

To me, the SD version doesn't look any different than the HD version....I've seen the transformers on DVD.....it looked alot better on analog TV in 1985, GI Joe didn't look any better on DVD than it did on cable, in fact in many ways it looked worse...that softness of an analog signal covers up alot of flaws.

Now granted, those were made-for-tv quickjobs alot of the time, but even the Don Bluth masters, while good looking, dont really improve by being scanned in at a higher resolution.

I related it to scanning a photograph on a PC.

A good scan shows whats there in the photo. A bad scan shows patterns, the grain of the medium the picture is printed on, tiny flaws in the surface of the original hardcopy, etc...so what if you now have a super pixel-perfect gigantic scan of an image....what did that get you? Nada.

DL in widescreen might be nice, but I can't agree with you guys that the picture will be "better".

[DaverJ]

dub273... thanks for understanding and supporting my point of view. :) I should probably mention at this point that HeadRusch and I have a... "history", we'll call it. He has enjoyed driving me batty for years.

I don't think he really believes hand-drawn animation doesn't look any better in HD... he's a true HD enthusiast and smarter than that. ;) I mean, even a non-enthusiast can look at a simple diagonal line and recognize that it looks sharper (less pixelated) and better in a higher resolution.

[HeadRusch]

..and painkiller still sucks.

PS: I'm actually playing through painkiller slowly but surely. I turn on the guns/ammo cheat and just blast my way through the environments.

Not fun, but I wouldn't be much of a FPS gamer if I didn't at least play most of the way through the game. :P

[dub273]

..and painkiller still sucks.Painkiller was ... OK ... for me; I actually liked the different types of weapons, and I thought the bosses were huge and mind-blowing. I liked the frenetic feel of the monsters all bum-rushing you, a la the original DOOM. But for some reason or another (repetition?), I lost interest and never actually got around to finishing the game. So while I wouldn't say it "sucks", I can understand that it didn't live up to certain expectations.

[DaverJ]

I remember a suspended bridge scene being pretty cool... you could climb up the wires while trying to fight.

Am I thinking of the right game...?