i liked the office environments in fear. they had something going with that nice brownish plain style. The industry environments sucked a bit, though; too generic random pipe/grate systems? 

Both the gameplay and art in Painkiller were good (in my opinion), but the level design was poor to nonexistent.

You had good solid weapons and powerups, a good range of enemies with interesting behaviours... and an endless series of box rooms which did absolutely nothing to compliment or enhance the gameplay. Fail.

I don't actually know the details of the dev team, but if I had to guess I'd say the levels were made by artists from very basic plans provided by the game designer. They probably didn't have "level designers" at all. 

Some cool levels. Or was that the expansion? Or both? 

I didn't play all the way through it, but most PK levels I saw were literally like this:

1. Enter large box room. "Door" (ugly, out of place stone block that is) closes behind you.
2. Spawn 7 thousand waves of monsters, all of which charge directly at the player in aforementioned box room because there's no interesting combat terrain or any kind of AI scripting.
3. Defeat horde, "door" opens and you may exit the area.
4. Enter next area, go to step 1... 

that's how I remember PK too.

And personally I didn't think the monster design was all that great either. Like the endless boxrooms, they just seemed to be endless variations on the same monster design but with a slightly different model/skin to complement the aesthetic of the particular level. Sure there were some interesting ideas in there like the HP-sapping scythe thing, but without any decent AI it's reduced to 'just another basic melee weapon'.

Deathmatch was a blast. It also had bloody brilliant netcode. I never ever ever had lag in Painkiller. Once again the level design let that side of the game down a little bit though. 

AvP2 was heaps better than avp1. Better levels, better AI and better immersion. 

more cartoony, less moody

maybe its just me... 

I found AvP2 to better in pretty much all departments as well. 

Did have some well-designed levels - the 'venice' (made by someone who's never been there) level was excellent - manouvere through the city taking various routes with the sun dawning as you complete the level, changing the lighting. The bigger enemy's can pick up the smaller ones to use as human shields.

Levels like that did tend to be exceptions though.

I wouldn't say they had artists designing the levels, just inexperienced level designers who allowed themselves to be pushed around by the art team. 

I prefered AvP2 too, but AvP1 was scarier somehow. 

Avp2 was a great game, but was let down by the poor graphics engine :(

The models did look very cartoony and the animation was very jerky and generally very poor :(

I did prefer the graphics and atmosphere in avp1, though avp2 had a much better narrative and better gameplay scenarios in most places 

what avp1 did so well was the dark claustraphobia. The use of the vision modes - for all species - was masterful. Once they got that right, it didn't matter that the textures were hideous photosources and the level design bland and utilitarian.



And personally I didn't think the monster design was all that great either...they just seemed to be endless variations on the same monster design but with a slightly different model/skin to complement the aesthetic of the particular level.

Indeed.

The problem with PK was that it's designers clearly had a hard-on for oldskool FPS ( which was a good thing ) but they were under the sad delusion that DooM and Quake were great games because of two and only two things:

1. hordes
2. bunnyhopping

the rest of the experience seems to have completely passed them by.

This is a problem you get when the understanding of a type of game design is throttled by obsession with leetness; there's almost no diferentiation between players and designers, and expertise is reduced to an almost neurotic concentration on only a tiny area of gameplay. 

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/17594

kind of a cross between Cave Story and Echochrome 

Yeah, been waiting for this one to come out, looks nice. 

"Indeed.

The problem with PK was that it's designers clearly had a hard-on for oldskool FPS ( which was a good thing ) but they were under the sad delusion that DooM and Quake were great games because of two and only two things:

1. hordes
2. bunnyhopping
"

I agree 100% with you. I hated painkiller, it was just a mindless slaughter of hordes of identical monsters(with different skins). The pacing, the quality of the design of the monster, the setting\atmosphere, the level design were nothing like the classics of id software.


I hope some day a proper successor to quake\doom will be released. 

http://www.gametap.com/grimm/episode_05.html 

Okay so I'm slowly catching up on all the games I've missed over the last several years. Haven't really played anything since 2001, apart from Unreal 2. I got a new computer this year (March) so I'm started from 2001 and playing all the good FPS since then! Already done Undying, WOT, SOF2 and this week played through Halo.

I was expecting it to be ugly repetitive shit, but gave it a chance. It didn't feature very good level design; there was alot of copy/paste of rooms and corridors, made worse by incredibly bland textures. But, the outdoors levels were good, and huge. Especially given this was released in 2001. I absolutely hated no quicksave and having to wait for checkpoints. Not because it was too hard, but some of the outdoor battles, eg. flying ships, gun turrets and rocket tanks with a dozen aliens on foot, can take up to 10min of strategy gameplay to get through. Getting 90% of the way through only to get hit by a rocket and having to start all over again is inexcuseable. I actually found most of these outdoors battle scenes (particularly in level 8) to be much harder than the final 2 levels. Where's the big finale aswell? A lame poor-handling buggy ride is the finale.

Only carrying 2 weapons at a time was also a rubbish idea. But with the machine gun and shotgun combination, some of the close range combat against the Flood was surprisingly enjoyable.

Still, with ugly indoor level design and only say 30% of the gameplay being enjoyable, I can't say I'd ever sit through the game again. Nor am I eagerly anticipating the sequel. Very, very overrated. And while the story was decent, it was nothing worth being made into a blockbuster. 

Am I the only one who thought "free during the first 24 hours" meant "downloading during the first 24 hours and play it when ever you want"? I am pretty sure I played the previous episodes after more than 1-2 days even, not it is not possible anymore. Using Gametap.

Oh yes, DRM, kiss my ass.

Kona: If you like great stories and atmosphere, then give Max Payne 2 a try. 

I realized when I tried to play episode 2 one day later. Makes sense not allowing people to stretch the free offer indefinitely. It's a Steam clone, after all.

I've lost interest anyway (after having played three episodes). The game has nice art, but gameplay gets old quickly. Unless, that is, they saved the really interesting features for later episodes. I also found that I hardly remember any of the tales which makes the game's story all the more confusing, especially the dark version. 

I already wondered why they would allow people to get the game(s) for free. Yeah, it got boring, especially since none of the episodes reached the fun of Episode 1. In the latest you sometimes have only one level to reach to finish the level, how boring compared to the "you have to jump"-birds in ep1. 

crap looking enemies and indoor areas, outdoors do look better. But I do find the core gameplay to be quite fun.

Still, only about 1/3 of the way in, will see how it fares up by the end. 

Yeah Contract Jack (crappy Nolf prequel), Serious Sam 1 and then Max Payne 2 are next on my list. What's better - SS1 or SS2?

Nitin... it gets pretty tedious after a while. Once the Flood come into it (think Halflife headcrabs... only thousands of them), it actually gets slightly more fun, but the big outdoor scenes when your fighting heavy machinery is a pain in the ass. I nearly punched my computer on one instance. 

I preferred SS2 to 1 personally. 

I felt the other way around.
They are both very stupid though. 

can't wait http://www.monkeysofdoom.org/