All right all right, this is a new title, but I can review it and stay true to my criteria of game review because Dreamkiller goes for the old-school shooter style. Let's get one thing straight, no matter what anyone else tells you Dreamkiller IS a Painkiller clone.
Now, before I start berating the game for its idiotic plot and wasted potential, let's talk about the gameplay. You start off with just two element weapons that come out of your fists... one for fire and the other for air/wind (whatever the hell it was). Through the course of the game, you'll come across mini-guns, rocket launchers, lasers, shotguns that can shoot freeze-rays, and of course, a gun that shoots lightning and... balls of lightning (ha! you thought it was going to be shurikens, didn't you?). And because the entire game is set in other people's dreams, you get unlimited ammo, but what weapons you get depend on what patient you've hopped into at the moment. All of the weapons are effective in their own way and are all fun to use (well, except for the rocket launcher, but maybe that's just me). And each level, without variation follows this pattern: kill some monsters, move, kill some more monsters, move, kill even more monsters, move, kill yet more monsters, move, kill a boss (or three), level ends. Each of the bosses is interesting to look at, but frankly, you can beat most of them by just shooting at them, or working out what nearby object/s keeps respawning them, then shooting them. So, when it comes to gameplay, Dreamkiller clearly isn't trying to push any envelopes, but it still manages to be pretty damn fun.
Now onto the story, level design, and wasted potential. You play as Alice Drake (who is a rather comical character because she sounds like Bloodrayne on crack) with the mystical ability to pop in and out of other people's dreams and fuck around in them. Okay, okay, she just tries to go in and "cure" their fears and issues, but come on, I don't really think plastering someone's fear of being overworked with a shotgun is going to solve anything. After a few levels, Alice starts to think that the increasing amount of fear in her patients might be somehow connected (despite the fact that none of her patients have any REAL connection to each other) and that the monsters or "phobias" she's been mowing down have been fighting harder than before... almost as if for their lives (well of course they are; you're shooting lightning and lasers into their faces, you idiot). After that, the plot only gets dumber, almost to a Resident Evil degree. The level design (and the monsters), however, are the highlight of the game. Like its predecessors, Dreamkiller's environmnets range from boring to bizarre, often on the same level. And the monsters, well, there's this one level where you have to cure a guy's fear of being overworked by marching through a nightmare version of his office building, and killing nightmare versions of his fellow office workers (who look like Left 4 Dead versions of Freddy Kruger). How this cures your patient's fear is never explained, but it was still a fun level, so what the hell? And from that point on, the levels just kept getting more creative, but the monsters sadly, didn't. After a while it became perfectly obvious that the developers had run out of ideas for new monster types, so instead of THINKING, they just kept re-skinning the same 5 or 6 enemy types and hoped no one would notice. But the thing that really pissed me off about the game was the fact that it never gave me the chance to analyze the patient's minds through the level design (like you could in Psychonauts). And this isn't from a lack of material to work with: there were floating gears, a whole section played out on a patient's heart, a large tree floating in the middle of nowhere, and a number of other set pieces that could've led to some interesting psychological discourse. Or at least that would've been the case until the developers, assuming that gamers are giant morons, decided to have Alice Drake tell the player EXACTLY what each interesting set piece is supposed to indicate about a person's psyche. I really think that the game would've been vastly improved if they only had Alice talk during the game's few cutscenes. Yes, Mindware Studios, exploring someone's mind is interesting, but it is only interesting if you let us, THE PLAYERS, work out for ourselves what is interesting about the minds in which the levels are built around. Which brings me to my next major problem with the game: they should'nt have made it a Painkiller clone. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of fun playing through Painkiller a few times, but with Dreamkiller's premise, there really was a lot of potential for a true survival horror game set in other people's heads (and meaning that instead of shooting things to "cure" people's fears, you'd be solving environmental puzzles that would actually affect the patient in some tangible way).
So over all, avoid this game at all costs.
Now, before I start berating the game for its idiotic plot and wasted potential, let's talk about the gameplay. You start off with just two element weapons that come out of your fists... one for fire and the other for air/wind (whatever the hell it was). Through the course of the game, you'll come across mini-guns, rocket launchers, lasers, shotguns that can shoot freeze-rays, and of course, a gun that shoots lightning and... balls of lightning (ha! you thought it was going to be shurikens, didn't you?). And because the entire game is set in other people's dreams, you get unlimited ammo, but what weapons you get depend on what patient you've hopped into at the moment. All of the weapons are effective in their own way and are all fun to use (well, except for the rocket launcher, but maybe that's just me). And each level, without variation follows this pattern: kill some monsters, move, kill some more monsters, move, kill even more monsters, move, kill yet more monsters, move, kill a boss (or three), level ends. Each of the bosses is interesting to look at, but frankly, you can beat most of them by just shooting at them, or working out what nearby object/s keeps respawning them, then shooting them. So, when it comes to gameplay, Dreamkiller clearly isn't trying to push any envelopes, but it still manages to be pretty damn fun.
Now onto the story, level design, and wasted potential. You play as Alice Drake (who is a rather comical character because she sounds like Bloodrayne on crack) with the mystical ability to pop in and out of other people's dreams and fuck around in them. Okay, okay, she just tries to go in and "cure" their fears and issues, but come on, I don't really think plastering someone's fear of being overworked with a shotgun is going to solve anything. After a few levels, Alice starts to think that the increasing amount of fear in her patients might be somehow connected (despite the fact that none of her patients have any REAL connection to each other) and that the monsters or "phobias" she's been mowing down have been fighting harder than before... almost as if for their lives (well of course they are; you're shooting lightning and lasers into their faces, you idiot). After that, the plot only gets dumber, almost to a Resident Evil degree. The level design (and the monsters), however, are the highlight of the game. Like its predecessors, Dreamkiller's environmnets range from boring to bizarre, often on the same level. And the monsters, well, there's this one level where you have to cure a guy's fear of being overworked by marching through a nightmare version of his office building, and killing nightmare versions of his fellow office workers (who look like Left 4 Dead versions of Freddy Kruger). How this cures your patient's fear is never explained, but it was still a fun level, so what the hell? And from that point on, the levels just kept getting more creative, but the monsters sadly, didn't. After a while it became perfectly obvious that the developers had run out of ideas for new monster types, so instead of THINKING, they just kept re-skinning the same 5 or 6 enemy types and hoped no one would notice. But the thing that really pissed me off about the game was the fact that it never gave me the chance to analyze the patient's minds through the level design (like you could in Psychonauts). And this isn't from a lack of material to work with: there were floating gears, a whole section played out on a patient's heart, a large tree floating in the middle of nowhere, and a number of other set pieces that could've led to some interesting psychological discourse. Or at least that would've been the case until the developers, assuming that gamers are giant morons, decided to have Alice Drake tell the player EXACTLY what each interesting set piece is supposed to indicate about a person's psyche. I really think that the game would've been vastly improved if they only had Alice talk during the game's few cutscenes. Yes, Mindware Studios, exploring someone's mind is interesting, but it is only interesting if you let us, THE PLAYERS, work out for ourselves what is interesting about the minds in which the levels are built around. Which brings me to my next major problem with the game: they should'nt have made it a Painkiller clone. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of fun playing through Painkiller a few times, but with Dreamkiller's premise, there really was a lot of potential for a true survival horror game set in other people's heads (and meaning that instead of shooting things to "cure" people's fears, you'd be solving environmental puzzles that would actually affect the patient in some tangible way).
So over all, avoid this game at all costs.
