10 Obscure Games You Might Not Have Tried

8. Painkiller

painkiller While they rarely positive Yahtzee Croshaw gave the game a glowing review on Zero Punctuation, and that boosted Steam sales by quite a bit, Painkiller still isn't as appreciated as it should be. Even though the story is completely throwaway and the cutscenes do drag on a tad, Painkiller is a mercilessly fun FPS that combines the gritty brown realism of modern games with the absolute carnage and frenzy of old school 90s FPSs like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. While Doom 3 tried a little hard to be System Shock 2 and diverged away from it's manic shooter origins, Painkiller is the game that Doom 3 should have been. It looks great, has wonderful enemy designs, varied and just plain awesome weapons, and some surprisingly creepy moments. Painkiller is the pinnacle of throwback shooters, and really deserves your time. Painkiller: Black Edition (which includes some extras) is available on Steam and GOG.com for $9.99. The game is also available on the original Xbox as Painkiller: Hell Wars.
 
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Contributor

Born in London, England, James is a media sponge. He consumes media of all shapes and sizes, from movies, to games, to music. He'll take it all. Apart from spending most of his life surrounded by media (his parents are musicians and his brother is a writer), he has been writing film reviews professionally for almost two years, and spends most of his time watching films, playing video games, and generally being an extremely anti-social person. Luckily, that leaves him a lot of time to write articles, such as the ones you will see on this page. Enjoy!