I think its because there's no combat progression, the first fights are so easy you never learn how to fight properly and then when you get to difficut ones, you have to learn a technique there.

Yep, that's a good description of what's wrong with the combat. I never stopped button mashing until like 90% into it, when you have to suddenly learn how to block every attack to survive. 

Is great as well. The bosses are a bit stupid and random, and the expansion has some terrible map designs (forcing the player to know about bunny-hopping or giving no clue at all how to proceed). But its still great, some very nice artwork, combat and physics.

I considered switching from q1 mapping to Painkiller. 

so far, painkiller is the most 2d game i've played in some time (not counting the doom reinstall I did a few days back).

all the gihting is on eye level, wit hardly any 3d combat. Just 5 levels in. And yes, the two bosses so far have been totally random. The one you couldnt kill by firing had blood when yous hot him and the one you could kill by firing didnt show any damage. 

I gave up on that game after quite a few levels/bosses because it was just too damn repetitive and boring. The actual base combat is pretty fun (the weapons feel good to use and the enemy reactions are of course amusing), but the levels were just so damn unimaginative and plain that there was almost no game there.

Considering that the game has pretty decent combat/weapons and some interesting monster types that could potentially be used to good effect, its a real shame that all they bothered to do with the levels was basically this:

- Player enters box room (completely flat with no height variation)
- Doors close ahead of and behind player (that is, "hello, I am a generic gameplay device" doors that don't match the art of the level)
- Hordes of monsters spawn in waves and run directly at the player
- Player kills all monsters, doors open again
- Repeat x 89738924682638479287643972

The levels of course look nice (apart from the lack of 3d-ness in most areas). More so than any other popular game I've played, it seems quite obvious to me that they had a bunch of artists building the levels (possibly from game desginer sketches/notes... or not) rather than experienced level designers/builders. 

so far agree 100% with what you say, although I also have a beef with the progression in some levels, but I'm not bored yet :) 

But there are some real gems inside there as well; the venice level, hell, some of the base sections and the colliseum from the expansion.

It is just horde combats, but the game never pretends to do anything else - as complex as it gets is the gold / silver cards management.

That's what I liked about it; you're dropped into the game right away. 

Tend to agree with the above comments, but I did like Painkiller, the style and stuff made it worthwhile, and although I'm not a big horde fan, as that sort of stuff goes, it was fine. 

for a quick runaround.

The texturing is phenomenal!! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcvdeYGk7hU

some ps3 downloadable mindfuck... 

of the echochrome game lurking somewhere on the net that can be played with. I can't remember where it is, nor am I helpful enough to find it and post the link... but it's there :) I think there is a web version and also an exe somewhere. 

looks awesome. It's really nice (and sort of rare) to see people trying to come up with a distinctive visual style for a game, especially one that is appropriate to the distinctive gameplay. 

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/16/behind-sonys-echochrome-is-the-ole-coordinate-system/ 

I was just going to post a link about it! Actually I think I'll still post the dirct link to the page where you can download the interactive editor: http://tserve01.aid.design.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~fujiki/ole_coordinate_system/index.html 

didn't read here and see you posted it first :) 

a PS3 game in the PC games thread! I'm so confusedddd. 

http://www.videlectrix.com/videlectrix_demos.html

Play-in-your-browser versions of Videlectrix games. 

Since most of the discussion tends to be about general game design/mechanics rather than platform specific issues. It's much more interesting than "Recommend good PC games for Shambler". 

Way to miss the point. No need for bollox like that. 

I recommend the games on http://nifflas.ni2.se/ (just in case you didn't play them yet). 

But I didn't agree with the split back then and I still think that most of the material posted in both threads are of the nature that it would be more fruitful to have them in one place. 

it does feel like a sort of artifical distinction to me. For example, nitin was playing a PC port of Sands of Time, whereas I played the xbox and gamecube versions, yet we had a conversation about it here. 

suck. That is all. 

and concepts in Painkiller, but I didn't care for the horde combat so much nor the boss encounters. It got boring.

Kinn and Necros do horde way much better. 

At least they were varied and always required a special technique/thinking to beat them. 

that you never have any idea what it is till you die a few times.