If
Doom were done for the first time today, it would look something like
Painkiller. It is about as straightforward as you're going to get with an FPS while avoiding getting boring. With so many people trying to revolutionize the FPS market, it seems most have forgotten where their roots came from.
Painkiller is an homage to those roots, whether the developers realized this when they were making it or not.
The story (which is subdued for most of the game and only really comes out in cut scenes) starts off with you dying, simple as that. You then become a hit man for the ethereal world and you take it from there, killing mindless hordes of the damned, undead, or anybody else that shouldn't be messing around in limbo.
The single player experience is as linear as you can get, but in a good way. The levels are easily navigable, sometimes encompassing a single outdoor area. They are also designed well enough to be interesting, meaning that the linearity is null and void. Most people seem to have forgotten the concept that simpler is usually better, but it was dutifully paid attention to here. Your goal is to run around and kill everything. Whether you have to mow down seemingly limitless waves of dead knights or find that crucial weak point on a huge boss, everything must be terminated with extreme prejudice.
The weapons at your disposal reflect the gameplay like a polished mirror; simple but effective. In Painkiller, as opposed to many other FPS's, your 'fists' have been replaced by a hook that can launch out and stick to a wall, leaving a laser trail in its path to slice and dice anything unlucky enough to walk through it. It can also be used up close as a sort of horizontal blender, allowing you to break out of corners if you've been backed in.
The rest of the weapons are an assortment of old tried and true FPS tools of destruction combined with some very unique alternative fire modes. Shotguns, chain guns, and a spike launcher (my favorite) aren't necessarily that unique, but combined with their secondary fire modes they can become great weapons of mass destruction. The chain gun has a rocket launcher built in, and the shotgun can freeze enemies, quite literally, allowing you to then blow them apart with a single shot.
As interesting as the weapons are, the things you use them on definitely take the cake. Each enemy is unique from the rest, and each brings with it a new challenge to face. They even work with each other, and when two of a different kind meet up, strange things may happen. For instance, there are two types of baddies with swords, one bigger than the other. The bigger one can chop the smaller one's head off, sending it into a frantic whirlwind of steel and bone. At the end of each chapter, as a kind of reward for slaughtering thousands of goons, you get to tackle some of the biggest bosses ever seen in an FPS, and that's no understatement. It's things like that which make Painkiller such a joy to play.
