Articles
It gives me a great pleasure to introduce you to Dreamcatcher. Dreamcatcher has provided us with this game for a review and i am looking forward to continue to review their products.
Today i am going to review Painkiller latest expansion Overdose. Overdose have been developed but Mindware Studios s.r.o. Little bit about Mindware:
"We believe that video games are one of the most thrilling and exciting forms of entertainment today, providing users with a truly unique, engaging and "on the edge of your seat" experience.
With continued advances in technology and an increasingly more technologically oriented public, we believe that interactive software will become one of the most popular and sought after forms of entertainment. Video game software sales alone are expected to exceed $18.5 billion internationally in 2003, exceeding Hollywood's global box office take.
Our aim is to be a consistent, reliable provider of high quality video games and interactive software and to continue to build a company of hard driving, highly committed and commercially experienced personnel based in emerging markets."
About the Product
So what is Overdose? Overdose is a first person shooter mod for the game Painkiller. Most of the mod's out there only provide multi player capabilities. Unlike other mod's Mindware presents us with a single player and multi player modes. Following is the minimum and recommended compatibility settings, which you would need to rung this game.
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Now that we got the technical information out of the way, lets take a look at the actual game.
Closer look
Right from the beginning i would like to mention that this game is rated M (mature). This game contains violent graphic images and animations. Please make sure children under ago of 15 do not play this game.
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Front shot
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Side shot
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Overdose came in the very morbid yet stylish box. The box had no real weight to it. I assumed that it contains only a cd and a small manual. On the side of the package you can see very clearly the name of the game.
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Back shot
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Top shot
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On the back of the package there is a synopsis of the game and ratings warning. At the top and the bottom of the box i found two seals that protects the box from being opened.
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Open Insert
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Intro
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On the inside i found a nice panorama of what looked to be a battle with following message "Hell's Most Guarded secret has been unleashed upon the universe."
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Inside
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Everything on the table
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There are few more advertising images and explanations of weapons and different modes of play on the package. When i have opened the box i found exactly what i thought, a cd and a small instruction booklet.
The installation was very easy and very fast. Overdose comes as a stand alone game and does not require any additional software. The only thing you need is DirectX 9c.
My testing rig consisted of Asus P4C800-E with Intel 3.0 chip and 1 gig OCZ ram. The video card i have used was Ge Force 7800 OC BFG.
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As you can see from the requirements, this game does not require anything crazy as far as hardware goes. Overdose features a vide range of "mutilating" weapons. One of the weapons looked like a sniper rifle. While in the zoomed mode you can see chopped graphics.
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Some of the enemies i have encountered would come out at me from no where and totally unexpended. This games remind me of my old favorite Serious Sam. Mindless shooting an no rules:)
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The visual effects were not too bad at all. Very unique patterns of blood and mutilations. Overdose has lots of different maps which are quite unique in their own way.
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Mindware did a pretty good job on the weather effects in this game. They looked like something Doom would make:P. Alot of the small objects in the game have alot of details.
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As i have mentioned earlier, Overdose comes with allot of crazy weapons so you never know what you might expect when you find a new weapon as you progress.
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One thing i found lousy was AI in this game. The monsters are not intelligent as far as dodging goes. You might just say this is a mindless shoot em up game, but that's what makes it fun. heh.
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Overdose features some of the old and new weapons. Weapons look devilish and very unusual. Of course my fav is a shotgun heh.
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Each map has one or more bosses. They all look gigantic and definitely thought to kill. Over all Mindware spent alot of time on the details of the monsters and bosses.
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Multi player has some cool features and maps. All of the items in the single player mode could be found in the multi player mode also. I am not sure why but some of the maps in multi player mode reminded me of quake maps.
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Event though i haven't played multi player games in a while, i still hold my title of being #1 on the frag result:)
Conclusion
What we got here is a straight up first person shooter. What makes Overdose cool, is mindless shooting and killings. Some of us like some plot to fps, for instance counter strike or even doom 3. Overdose belongs in the "Serious Sam" category. This game has some fun factors like in game voice overs. I always loved the voice overs in Serious Sam and Painkiller. There are few things that i found that could cause an annoyance in the end users game play. Loading times in this game are very lengthily and this is very irritating. The multi player mode is fun but the maps are sort of small. This makes me thing that the game engine cannot handle large map. When i was searching for a multi player games, i only found one server that actually had any people in it.
If you ever player Painkiller and liked it, this game might be for you. The same story driven first person shooter gives you a rush and addiction to sit in front of a pc and play this game for hours. heh. Despite some small issues with the game and lack or AI i believe this game disserves a strong 7/10.
