Painkiller Overdose is the first expansion pack for Painkiller made by a studio other than People Can Fly and jesus christ does it show.
Overdose has some good in it, such as the beautiful looking levels and awesome new enemy designs. The new weapons steal the show as while most are reskins of Daniel's arsenal in the original game, they are still fun to use.
But that's where the good ends because this game is an unbalanced mess. For starters, the game gives you little ammo at all. Many times I found myself out of shotgun ammo which I never had the problem with in the original game. Some levels you would play through its entirety with no ammo for 3 of your guns because there are no pickups for them.
Another issue is that there are so many obnoxious enemies in the game which they throw at you in full force. In the original Painkiller, I would struggle to think of 5 enemies that I found extreme annoyances whereas in Overdose, there's annoying enemies spawned in everywhere and it makes me wonder if the developers actually playtested some of the levels. You've got enemies which teleport or spawn right on top of you, enemies that home into you and you cannot dodge them, or enemies that have a gas spray attack that has a huge hitbox that even when you're not in the actual particle effect, you still get hit anyway.
Another problem are the tarot card requirements. In the original Painkiller, tarot card requirements made sense for each level allocated and felt like a good challenge rather than a complete slog. Battle Out of Hell had the problem with making the tarot card requirements the hardest possible feat to pull off in each level in order to unlock the card. Overdose on the other hand just throws in tarot card requirements for levels and it's obvious that they didn't bother testing them to see if they "fit". Short levels in Overdose for some reason have tarot card requirements such as "Beat the level in 20 minutes" and without even rushing through the level you can beat the level before you hit the 10 minute mark. The worst offender is the Dead Marsh level, which wants you to only use your melee weapon for the entire level if you want to unlock the card. The problem is that the enemies in the level are extremely dangerous at melee range and have enough health to tank a few hits from the ranged attack of the melee weapon. At one point, the level spawns in flying enemies with tiny hurtboxes and fly erratically around the player. It becomes incredibly tedious to try to kill the 30 or so flying enemies with your melee weapon that I doubt anyone who made the level actually tested the tarot card requirement to see if it's reasonable. The asylum level in the original level had the same melee only card requirement but it fit the level because it was indoors, enemies moved very slowly and they didn't have a lot of health so you could use the ranged alt-fire to kill them with ease.
My final issue with the game is the performance. This game has so many crashing issues. Some tarot cards are impossible to place in your deck because it causes the game to crash instantly and entering demon morph mode is like a gamble whether the game wants to crash or not. The worst are the fucking horrendous loading times. Even with the fix I used from a guide, the loading times are awful. You could probably make a sandwich or go for a toilet break and when you get back the game still hasn't loaded a level yet. This makes death even more frustrating because you have to sit through another long loading screen again.
Overall, Painkiller Overdose is mid at best and only diehard Painkiller fans would only find some enjoyment out of this with a protagonist with the ultimate ability to repeat the same 4 one-liners 37 times a level.
Overdose has some good in it, such as the beautiful looking levels and awesome new enemy designs. The new weapons steal the show as while most are reskins of Daniel's arsenal in the original game, they are still fun to use.
But that's where the good ends because this game is an unbalanced mess. For starters, the game gives you little ammo at all. Many times I found myself out of shotgun ammo which I never had the problem with in the original game. Some levels you would play through its entirety with no ammo for 3 of your guns because there are no pickups for them.
Another issue is that there are so many obnoxious enemies in the game which they throw at you in full force. In the original Painkiller, I would struggle to think of 5 enemies that I found extreme annoyances whereas in Overdose, there's annoying enemies spawned in everywhere and it makes me wonder if the developers actually playtested some of the levels. You've got enemies which teleport or spawn right on top of you, enemies that home into you and you cannot dodge them, or enemies that have a gas spray attack that has a huge hitbox that even when you're not in the actual particle effect, you still get hit anyway.
Another problem are the tarot card requirements. In the original Painkiller, tarot card requirements made sense for each level allocated and felt like a good challenge rather than a complete slog. Battle Out of Hell had the problem with making the tarot card requirements the hardest possible feat to pull off in each level in order to unlock the card. Overdose on the other hand just throws in tarot card requirements for levels and it's obvious that they didn't bother testing them to see if they "fit". Short levels in Overdose for some reason have tarot card requirements such as "Beat the level in 20 minutes" and without even rushing through the level you can beat the level before you hit the 10 minute mark. The worst offender is the Dead Marsh level, which wants you to only use your melee weapon for the entire level if you want to unlock the card. The problem is that the enemies in the level are extremely dangerous at melee range and have enough health to tank a few hits from the ranged attack of the melee weapon. At one point, the level spawns in flying enemies with tiny hurtboxes and fly erratically around the player. It becomes incredibly tedious to try to kill the 30 or so flying enemies with your melee weapon that I doubt anyone who made the level actually tested the tarot card requirement to see if it's reasonable. The asylum level in the original level had the same melee only card requirement but it fit the level because it was indoors, enemies moved very slowly and they didn't have a lot of health so you could use the ranged alt-fire to kill them with ease.
My final issue with the game is the performance. This game has so many crashing issues. Some tarot cards are impossible to place in your deck because it causes the game to crash instantly and entering demon morph mode is like a gamble whether the game wants to crash or not. The worst are the fucking horrendous loading times. Even with the fix I used from a guide, the loading times are awful. You could probably make a sandwich or go for a toilet break and when you get back the game still hasn't loaded a level yet. This makes death even more frustrating because you have to sit through another long loading screen again.
Overall, Painkiller Overdose is mid at best and only diehard Painkiller fans would only find some enjoyment out of this with a protagonist with the ultimate ability to repeat the same 4 one-liners 37 times a level.