"The PAIN Engine works a bit differently from most game engines. All the level design is done directly in a professional grade 3D modelling app, in this case, Maya. The Engine then imports the level directly into the game... but it isn't very mod friendly.
We will likely be releasing a world editor, but not a level editor. The world editor will allow you to repopulate the levels, setting your own spawn points etc., but will not allow for level design." 

i liked the game very much! i forgot when i laughed that loud last time when playing games :) it's funny toying with fyzics engine.
and i'm looking forward playing the full version of course. 

Head bob is annoying and pointless.

Moving around could feel a lot smoother.

You can't bind a key to "," which is extremely fucking annoying for my control setup.

Changing weapons with mouse 3 is very b0rky.

I expect the lack of save/load will be very frustrating. 

I played this until 3:00 in the morning or so, and I'm pretty stoked.

Fun weapons, cool enemies, the levels just ooze atmosphere, and oddly, I'm very impressed with the music and sound effects, which is something that usually doesn't make all that much of an impression on me one way or the other.

There's a nice level of depth/replay embedded in this game (e.g. do X to unlock a card, find secrets, find secret items, etc.)

Has anyone figured out what "objects" you're supposed to destroy? I just get 0 every time . . . or is that broken/disabled for the demo?

Is anyone but me a sick bastard who laughed like a little girl after noticing that you can jump on the dead bodies and make them squirt innards? :)

And yes, the lack of a level editor makes me quite sad . . .

(Shambler, I'm pretty sure that the lack of save/load is just for the demo . . .) 

Shambler: look at mouse wheel sensitivity in controls and set it to 3 or something like that. I don't know why they would do it like that.

As for the lack of level editor: I think that's really horrible. I would hope someone would hack the exe so we can design levels in Maya, populate them with the world editor, and play that. I can't believe a company that can make such a great game would lack the foresight of designing it to allow custom levels. It's boneheaded. 

finished the demo!
it fucking rocks!
ROCKS!
/me hugs Painkiller and cannot wait for the full version!!!!1 

Played, well, *some* of the first level. Until just after the wizard boss, and then someone was throwing zombies at me and I died. The lack of saving in the demo really, really sucks. If you're trying to sell your product via a demo, FFS don't make it offputtingly frustrating playing the damn thing.

Anyway, aside from that and the stupid control b0rkage (mouse wheel is now working, mouse 3 isn't), quite entertaining game. Basically does what it says on the tin. Not too horde combat based so far, thankfully. Collecting souls is fun as is the all-too-brief bezerker mode. The main gameplay issue I found was a lack of health even with the souls. Needs more trick moves too... Good physics engine though. So, ummm yeah, someone h4x0r fucking saving in already. 

On one hand, I really wanna play the game -- but on the other I am pissed all to hell that it doesnt have a built-in map editor. I would really love to show it to these people Can Fly bastids, and boycott their game for such an oversight, but it's so much fun.


Damn them. Damn them to hell. I'll prolly end up getting it. 

...unfortunately based on partial completion of the first map. I agree with Shambler completely wrt saving. I made a stupid mistake and blew a barrel up in my face so it's back to square 1. You want to make people as happy as possible to sell your product and providing a save option is good business sense. Please don't annoy prospective buyers. I don't have an MBA education to back up this statement but I have bought things before.

Pant, pant. Anyhow, this game looks and plays great (plays as well as could be expected on my now lesser machine). I like the theme and the physics engine is very entertaining. I watched the trailer and compared to that, playing on my 1.2GHz P4 + 64MB Radeon was like being in a nightmare where time itself sloooowed way down and it's like trying to run in corn syrup. Not such a bad thing since it allowed me to actually aim whereas keeping time constant would have made it unplayable. Grabbing floating souls before they disappeared was fun and very much needed since health was sparse. Breaking coffins for gold was interesting but I don't know what the treasure will be used for (perhaps something cool in the full game.)

I toggled the music off and that improved the ambiance. I took the suggestion listed above and got the mouse wheel to work nicely.

I know this is only a demo and this comment could be premature but despite the great setting and enemies and obvious gothic horror theme, it doesn't seem scary at all compared to other games that did elicit fear (Undying, AvP2, System Shock 2). I hope the final version does attempt to build fear using techniques of suspense as used on these other games; drawing you in and freaking you out. If, instead, it adopts a more arcade style mob-mowing gameplay architecture (and they kind of advertise this on their website), that would be a disappointment and a waste of what looks to be very high quality ingredients. Wouldn't it be nice if they had a skill setting that did feature mob slaughter for fun after you finished the proper, well thought out and carefully crafted story based SP campaign.

Based on what I've seen so far, this game is on my wish list but I'll probably wait for the price to drop. It looks and feels very cool. Wish me luck in having the patience to finish all the demo as I really do want to see everything in it. 

This game is a definate winner. Very cool settings and the new physics engine is a real treat. I just finished the first map and I know that I want to go back and find those secrets and goodies. Difficulty feels right for the Insomnia skill level. Despite the Matrix-like slow pace, it is still fun and playable on my system. On a killer box, it would be awesome.

The one thing (amongst other things) that I love is how this game really offers the rewarding one-shot kills for the player who takes the effort to make shots count. Headshots followed by aerial cartwheels is too cool for words alone. Wheras some games force you to hose down enemies with copious quantities of lead, in Painkiller, you can lay them down with a well placed dowel rod. The speargun is my favorite.

One unforgivable flaw (which would be more forgivable if saves were allowed) is that on the second map, second arena with one bad guy left (an archer up high), I got permanently stuck between two angled pillars leaning up against the central building. I had to bail out of the game since I don't know the cheats. That made me grumpy but so far, this game is a must have for both looks and fun.

It's not scary though... 

Scary games are a dime a dozen and usually poorly done. I'd prefer to have something original.

I discovered that the alt fire on weapon 1 is actually rather powerful. It pulls dead bodies towards you making it easier to collect souls. I also found an instance of z-fighting in the first map and posted about it on the pk message board because I'm just that anal. 

I love this game =)

How fucking gorgeous is the palace map???! The end area make me peej all over the screen, love all the bags of fireworks you can set off as well, cool touch and it shoows off the games graphics and physics too :)

Scragbait - With money you buy "tarot card" powerups (2 available in demo) that give you stuff like more starting health, bullet time, 2x damage etc...

Sucks about the editing thing, hopefully there will be a 3dsmax import/export plugin so I can get jiggy! 

petard sacks rocks!
it was nearly orgasmic feel to see/hear them blasting! :) 

First: Thanks pushplay, that mouse wheel problem was bugging me. :)

Too much Serious Sam style horde combat in some levels. All the levels look gorgeous in texture, detail & architecture, but very simplistic in layout - just sort of open arenas.

Apart from these beefs, I would say the game rocks. Really enjoying the demo so far. :) 

The default video settings on the demo are all maxed. If you reduce the resolution to say 800x600, set the textures to medium and turn off dynamic lighting the demo plays fine on a 1 ghz chip (I have a geforce 4).