Painkiller is set up so that to complete the game (getting 24 black tarots) you have to play through it at least twice, if you want to make it easier on your poor self.

In fact, if you play any skill lower than Nightmare (that, unlike Quake, is not the hardest) you only get 22 levels, the 23rd, Prison, being available only from NM up and the 24th, Forest, only in Trauma (the hardest skill level).

You can find a pretty complete rundown of how the game works here http://painkiller.maledicted.net/ if you're interested.

You probably used the Powermad mod to get to Forest, it does a lot of nice things, like allowing quicksaves in Trauma... 

Actually thinking about it the main reason forest was so hard was because I was going for its card unlock. The requirement is to use no tarot, which means no gold card usage (ouch) and no silver cards equipped.

Trauma is also pretty nasty. No souls so no health from them, and no demon morph, and no healing at checkpoints. In most levels bunny hopping means you avoid most damage but forest is too compact and has so many monsters it's hard to avoid it all :) It took me a while to crack it in the end. The checkpoint area halfway through it being particularly nasty if I recall... 

i just remembered, i absolutely loved the mine level in booh. you start at the bottom of this huge mine shaft and work your way up the sides.
i remember when i got near the top, thinking 'well, too bad this map is almost over'.
then you actually get to move out of the mine shaft into a bit of a quarry area at the top. i remember it felt really cool that there's seemed almost like an 'extra' area up there, even though it was part of the normal map progression. 

It's a game worth playing just to see the variety and quality of the settings. I don't like the fact that some levels are locked out based upon your skill selection. Is there an easy cheat so they can all be played on Normal?

I did find installs and patches to be horrendously buggy and I had to struggle to get the original to play after installing a mission pack. That seems lame. Also, when a game needs that many patches - it says a lot about their attitude about quality control.

Gameplay is very limited but the demon mode you get after collecting enough souls is good violentfun. Also, fliffing zombies with the spear gun is neat and the physics were good. 

...is the same as flipping. The zombie's center of gravity was at it's Adam's apple. Headshots flipped them. 

As for the buggy installs, they're horrible, I had the original one and it was a Nightmare, I recently bought a magazine bundle with the complete Black Edition+Overdose and, while not perfect, installs have worked fairly well...

Trauma mode is indeed nasty, and I never had considered how much scarce, if any, health caches can be used to make a game really hard.

I think that the Powermad mod gives you the opportunity to play the whole game in any skill you choose, not sure though... 

Yea Powermad is great. Also adds an otherwise unavailable noclip cheat iirc, which is nice for taking screenshots :)

Have to say I never had any trouble installing or playing it, always felt like a very solid game to me. Perhaps I was just really lucky :E

And the Mine level was pretty awesome. Huge like the Docks level but vertical. 

i was lucky i guess, as i didn't have any problems installing nor do i remember very many (if any?) crashes while playing.

for me, the only negatives were the repetitive and uninspired gameplay and some maps looked good enough to make you forget you were basically just fighting one horde after another in a locked room. 

Was called gravel pit? Great level, although the pirate skeleton enemies were a bit stupid, thematically.

Forest was good, but plague village was better - those X's on the doors and undead were great.

I remember the Venice level when the sun rose towards the end. The tower of babel as well, had a cool endboss and nice vibe. 

Should I reinstall? 

there was some great design in many levels, pity about the layouts though, they could have been more imaginative.

I need to replay this sometime on my new rig I think. 

And yes, you should reinstall(forgive me guys, but these days I'm really PK psyched). 

my kid love the boss with the statues that give energy to the Dragon :) he already played thisv level lots of times!

I miss many bunnyjumpings because I'm use to QW that required more skills 

i don't blame you. i feel like taking a run through again myself. :) 

It's blasphemy to call the movement in painkiller bunnyhopping tbh. Probably the biggest disappointment in the end, was hoping it's multiplayer would be a Quakeworld HD with more balanced guns. But nope :( 

one thing i liked about the gameplay was that some monsters could debuff the player. a few had some kind of poison that would slow you down and there were these witches or something that would scream and your screen would start to go dark. the longer you were in the scream, the darker it got (up to pitch black but that took like 5 or 6 seconds). 

The slowing gits were really annoying though cause they jammed your gun :E 

Just got through Forest in Trauma.

Started Orphanage.

Creepy. 

for a game that was touted as mainly action, some levels give me the creeps. orphanage is a good example, but also asylum and any map where those strange 4 legged guys that have horns/giant claws for feet. those guys just seem to come out of nowhere! 

Just got through Lab. Here the tarots to be placed really come into their own. If you choose the wrong combination, it's just impossible to reach the end satisfyng the tarot condition for the level. BOOH can be even trickier than PK.

And I totally agree with necros. Lokis (it's what they're called, like the norse god of mischief)are just disturbing, especially in Opera House... As the exploding blanket children in Orphanage. 

Is this about a level Editor for PK, or am I seeing things?

http://pkzone.org/2010/07/paineditor-basics-tutorial-singleplayer-levels/ 

yeah, that's the editor. although, it's technically only half an editor. painedit allows you to place monsters and items and stuff but, afaik, you can't actually build anything. you still need maya or some 3d package to do that.