'Painkiller' is exceptionally beautiful, disturbing

By JOHN BREEDEN II
SPECIAL TO WASHINGTON POST
If you think you've mastered the shooter genre, then you haven't seen "Painkiller." This game throws waves and waves of hideous monsters at you for hours on end, gives you no time to catch your breath and may make you lose your lunch in the bargain, thanks to its creepy, bloody imagery. When the game lets you use a "stake gun" to pin bodies to a wall, it definitely has earned a Mature rating.
"Painkiller" starts you off as a car-crash casualty who can only escape purgatory by killing the four demons leading Lucifer's new army. In other words, you become God's hit man. The action follows traditional shooter outlines -- you must kill an entire wave of enemies to get access to the next level of the game. These death matches take place in some of the most beautifully rendered, exceptionally disturbing settings I have ever seen. Bodies are strung from the rafters of burnt-out churches, blood spatters the walls and the soundtrack echoes with unsettling whispers and cries of pain and anguish.
The monsters are grotesquely clever and deadly. Executioners will chop open their fallen comrades to release swarms of spider beasts; warlords will use their buddies as meat shields to block your bullets; vampires must be hacked to bits, lest they resurrect themselves on the spot.
I can only stand this for an hour or so.
X"Painkiller," by DreamCatcher Interactive, is for Windows 98 SE or newer.