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Painkiller (2004)
Most competitive and challenging fast paced shooter since Quake days
A truly great fast paced first person shooter is the kind of game, that delivers a well paced and balanced game-play, is fast and has advanced movement techniques to master, is challenging in the sense that it delivers specific game challenges, those require the player to play better, faster, more precise, more careful in order to acquire specific rewards, has great replay-ability, is technically sound in graphics and in-game sounds, has a "free exploration" type level design, has a variety of useful guns and many enemies, and most important - is professionally competitive in the arts of professional 1 vs 1 gaming.
Painkiller delivers all that with mighty blow, and has not been bested yet! For example games like Bulletstorm or Hard Reset have many similar traits like Painkiller, but they lack the pure movement speed, don't have any advanced movement techniques, have too many invisible walls and don't offer the challenge of exploration for secrets and shortcuts like Painkiller does.
Painkiller is very fast - something that was missed in many single player games since the release of Return To Castle Wolfenstein. You can execute all sorts of difficult movement techniques.
1) The most important and quite most easy is bunny-hoping - it's not the same as strafing.. While you keep jumping forward, you gain speed and momentum. Once you reach the max speed, you will have the momentum to do difficult trick-jumps, those looked impossible from the first glance. Having mastered this, you will be able to jump over the walls and objects, keep momentum while doing 90 and 180 degree turns without loosing speed and similar stuff. Mastering this will allow you to deal with monsters more efficiently, access secret areas or shortcuts.
2) Second important technique is air control - once you have the max momentum, you can perform a jump around the corner in a hyperbola like pattern. Or you can use air control to land from high altitude down with amazing precision.
3) The third technique is wall climbing - you can climb the walls in this game, which would be impossible to climb in any other first person shooter games. This is most due to the fact that the game is unlimited in frames per second, and that in turn helps havoc physics to achieve it's goals.
4) The fourth notable technique is painkiller jumping - using you mêlée weapon you launch yourself gains gravity to access important places. This crucial for getting secrets and passing through shortcuts.
The graphics are very well done - even by 2013 standards the game looks neat.
But even better achieved than the graphics, i think, is the quality soundtrack of the game, which consists of the ambient music and the battle music. The ambient piece fits to the level design without annoying the player and repeating itself too many times. The ambient music is so good, that without it a major part of level depth and design would be lost! Together with architecture of the levels it creates the atmosphere, needed for level admiration and exploration. The battle music is what it is - once the monsters will spawn, heavy metal riffs will kick in to "pace" the battle and make you shoot in anger. Battle and ambient music are an option that can be disabled.
The weapons are a the key factor to game's success. Every weapon has a primary attack and an alternative attack. You get 5 weapons in the game, and then realize that there are 10 actually! The best about Painkiller weapons is that they deliver incredible satisfaction and do not feel as dull an ordinary as in Doom 3. When combining a primary and secondary attack you get a combo attack, that takes the best of each mode to it's most lethal damage!
Painkiller offers specific challenges: you can finish each level with the 5 stars rating - meaning you have to make something known as a perfect score, known in Quake games. Since every slain monster drops a spirit, you can make a spirit run, or you can make a gold-rush run, and try to acquire as much gold as possible. Gold is needed to buy tarot cards.. Of course an ordinary level speed-run or boss level time attack is the most popular challenge. You can make a tarot card unlocking challenge - one of the most obvious - just do what is told at the beginning of the level statistics and have that done in the end of the game. For example finish one level using a stake-gun only or finish another level without grabbing an armor..
The detail and accuracy in the level design is especially gorgeous. Looking at the levels like the Cathedral, Opera House or Palace you will appreciate the finest level design seen from the times of Serious Sam. The most amazing thing about the levels, which most of you don't even realize is that many of the them represent real world entities! There is an actual same looking Asylum somewhere in the US, same style Cemetery also in the US, same looking Train Station located in Austria...
All the levels are filled with monsters, and each level has it's unique distinctive monster list. For example you will only find Lepper Monks in levels like Town and Castle. So there is a certain sense of style that each level must have it's own kind of monsters.. And the bosses of this game are some of the biggest seen in any game so far. And all of are very challenging!
Painkiller is made for those who just want to kill in the most satisfactory ways possible, for those who like to master their skill in competitive gaming. It is an excellent game for people who like the many challenges this game offers
Painkiller is a must own for Quake and Serious Sam fans!
The Twelve Chairs (1970)
American people can't understand hummor
This movie is not even close to the REAL classic 12 Chairs 1971 movie by Leonid Gaiday. The problem is not in the director or actors. Brooks may be a good director, whatever, the facts are that American nation will never understand the classic Russian humor the way it's meant to be.
The Russian 1971 version of 12 chairs together with "adventures of Shurik" is widely considered to be simply the best Russian comedy of all time. Watching American 12 chairs version would be the same as forcing Pierre Richard to play a Schwarz's roles. Ridicioulus...
I can't believe that people like this movie and have read the novel at the same time, this is hard to understand...
Don't watch this movie! Watch classic 1971 and 1976 Russian movies instead!
Caligola (1979)
It's either masterpiece or junk
What can i say? I was shocked and i was fascinated! What kind of disappointed my though that apart those orgies, those were needed of course, some of them were pointless having no relations to the plot and continues of drama, but anyway this movie is underestimated too much. Most people complain about it being just too much out of frames of normal cinematography drama concept, but never less they don't want to notice the beauty of the drama in it. Anyway it is not a home made made porno video, but simply represents what has been happening in 37 - 41 years after Jesus Christ, what should be accepted without freaking out.
Generally it has very great acting, costumes and music, only may be the direction and camera is shitty, cause the director is a porno master, and the movie should was too much pornoficated when it should have been remembered as one of the greatest dram in the history of cinema.