Let me put it in the softest way I can... Painkiller is horrible :). I really wish I could be more enthusiastic about this game, but I just don’t think its possible :P. As demonstrated twice, such a game cannot be fixed in just a patch. Let me start by saying that two of the three maps that are the ONLY maps capable of playing 1v1 are not that great. DM_Sacred is a fairly good map in my opinion; I think it has good usage of the teleporters and armour/mega balancing. DM_pyscho is NOW messed up do to fact of the brilliance in using 60 second megas instead of 40. It has caused the conflicts, control, and battles to be one third more slower, now instead of a guy sitting at the 200 armour like its a CS final match for 2 armours, now has 3 armours and then proceeds to put aggression on the mega and runs back to his camping spot. And rules better be weapon respawn is less than 30seconds because if you don't have a stake aim of ten gellehsak's, you better be hoping to get a telefrag to get a kill, let alone grab a weapon. DM_Fallen2 is ridiculous, 2 megas says it all. Not only that but the placement of them are horrible. You better have a decent computer to grab the mega over the lava, otherwise you'll lag yourself into the pit... and it better not be in the first minute or two, because otherwise you don’t have rocket ammo to jump right out or you are dead. Not to mention, rockets are 100% pointless on this map. Fallen2 is big, so big that the ONLY fights what will result are lg vs chaingun. You'd have to have your back turned and staring at a wall if a stake or rocket on this map ever hits you.

I remember talks about when painkiller came out about how cool it is there’s like 5 weapons, but they all have secondary fire, which is like having 10 weapons. But wait, this game is dumbed down to just rocket, chain gun, and a few well placed stake shots. I don't ever see a need for a Rocket Arena mod in this game, that’s all this game appears to be :P. Netcode is in need of fixing, spectating needs to be smoother and a hud would be nice (or maybe its just me?), the chain gun went from massive knock back to nothing at all, the shotgun is an improvement but I still think needs to be stronger (its useless on fallen), the list goes on which I’m sure most of you already know. I'm not a negative person generally :P, but these things need to be addressed. Beta-testers were never listened to, or maybe they were and decided to forget it and go in their own direction. The patches need to resolve some of the key problems more. I believe, while this is not an actual important problem with the game, that the mega was ten times better with 40 second spawn than 60 seconds.

To get back to what the question was, will it be "the next big duel" game... currently, not a chance. If people really enjoy how simple FPS's are going and decide that rocket/chaingun only games are the way to go, then I guess its got to be. Whether this game is a success tournament-wise with both CPL and ESWC, despite the actual game, I think we will see more to come. I can only hope that Painkiller is going in a direction of more complexity to the game than jumping around and shooting one weapon.

Oh wow, painkiller needs a lot. More weapons in the maps other than just a rocket/chaingun and a lame shotgun for players to laugh at you if you equip it. More maps… more good maps. Better netcode. Balance the weapons more so we can have at least options to how we want to frag our opponent rather than being forced to use the rocket/chaingun combo or get lucky with the stake gun. Bring back the chaingun knockback. Needs the 40 second mega back instead of 60 seconds. Less server resource hogging. Needs to be capable of playing with more than four people :p. Smoother demos. Smoother spectating. A hud while spectating. A hud similar to the one in chaingun (haven’t tried it, but it looks nice). Better item placement on fallen2. The ability to see whose spectating when you click tab. A rail gun… or at least make the stake gun as fast as light. Only one mega per map for dueling. The ability to force ready on players by voting or other means (seems to be a problem when someone doesn’t know how to ready up in 1v1 or team games). A map editor… so maybe we can give a nice touch of how maps should be made for 1v1. I can go on… but lastly maybe a bit more “color” to the game rather than its gothic grey look. I understand its part of the game and its wonderful painkiller experience, but after a few hours of it I don’t want to feel ashamed to have to load up UT2K4 and smile while looking at its awesomeness. Yes Painkiller can do that to you :/.

Currently, no. With the issues as I have mentioned above, I don’t see it being the future of e-sports. A lot of people like or dislike UT2K4, but I think everyone can agree on the fact that it requires more skill to play than Painkiller. The weapons, movement, maps, and game play is just overly more complex. Painkiller has to evolve into something else in my opinion. But hey, Halo is at it’s second tournament at the CPL, so what do I know :P.

I think starting this game at the beginning generally helps, but its not like quake 3 where I watched everyone’s demo from every tournament and learned the game so quickly. Although, everyone sucks at the game which is going to be that much easier to win at :p. I think it will help me evolve my gameplay by starting at the beginning to where I can basically try and test the things that work or don’t instead of just being thrown into a game where there’s one or two ways to go about winning.

I always found it better to keep my opponent on their toes as much as possible. Confidence is a huge factor in gaming and once your opponent has it, you have to break it as soon as possible. I find it best by running straight at them and praying to quake gods that each rocket just goes right past me. So far I found it to be pretty effective against nearly every opponent. I mean what kind of player would expect someone to run straight at them at the most random times? Although I have had to switch up my routine a bit to counter the things my opponents would do to stop my berserk style. I had to do something that I found to be against my beliefs in gaming… playing defensive. So I had to throw in a mix of defensive and offensive for the past few tournaments to fix most of my disadvantages. But To this day I still don’t use a walk key at all. Seriously, why would you need to walk? Its only wasting precious time to get more frags.

But this kind of style certainly has shown not to be the most effective :p. I just found it easier to click a few buttons and run at the guy than camping behind a wall or corner listening for a footstep to come to run for another corner. Certainly, playing offensive is a little more fun in my opinion… unless you find it hilarious having your opponent look for you a minute or two until he loses you in a foot race. Although I have to admit, running from teleporter to teleporter does have its own fun to it… I think it’s just as effective in pissing you opponent off as running right at him.

But hey, glad some people like my style. Makes me laugh when players think it is the stupidest thing to do. I personally haven’t seen any player play as aggressive and be as effective doing it than I have… well maybe python and a couple others come close :p. But its not as easy as it looks, you better have the aim of five gellehsaks and a viju to pull it off. Call me cocky, but its true! :P

I think the invite list is pretty impressive with the likes of Fatal1ty, Stelam, and Vo0. Although, this is like how ut2k3 was back at the CPL Winter 2002… top names from all over the world showed up, lost to fat, whined and called it a day. And surprisingly, some unknown guy got second place. I personally think it will hold true for this tournament with an exception.

No ones playing this game boot camp style as far as I can tell, and the two people who so far has the skills to back up their name are Deatz and Vo0. I think each player’s personal style are either going to be the rise or fall of their painkiller career. But to be honest, I think fatal1ty has the best chance at taking the tournament out of everyone. He can switch up styles so easily that he’s not just offensive or defensive which will only cater to his game. Give him 5 hours to learn the maps inside and out, 1 hour to learn how to shoot a rocket and a chain gun, and 5 minutes to get down the complexity of moving around in the Painkiller world, and then you got yourself a champion.

I signed up for the painkiller tournament even before I decided to play it. I personally didn’t expect to be chosen. I figured that out of sixteen players in the world, its highly unlikely I would be chosen. Little did I know, I soon found out that the painkiller world has a hefty population of roughly 70 players. Surprisingly, all 70 are going to the CPL as well. So then I realized that there was a chance I could be chosen based on the fact that I was good at quake 3. I was however surprised that I was chosen despite my inactivity since CXG. Although, I am taking this game very seriously and continuing to play it in preparation for the tournaments ahead. So I would have to agree the invite is just, despite what people would hold to think :P.

Well back in ESWC and Quakecon 2003, I was forced to use a 69 fov to help out with my lacking in aim. I ended up doing fairly well in my opinion with it, despite feeling as if I’m looking through some binoculars the whole time. I also used real low sensitivity which I believed was 3, to help with my aim. Shortly after Quakecon, I moved it back up to 90 and upped my sensitivity quite a bit to 12, which resulted in a 4th at CXG and winning two online tournaments after that.

Right now in Painkiller, I’m using default fov, whatever it may be. I’m not sure what my sens is currently though, because of patch 1.15 I had to install various mouse things to try and fix a “mouse lag” I had… which nothing fixed it until 1.2 came out which miraculously was working just right.

Luckily Painkiller is all about speed, which only helps my style more than hurts. So far, I haven’t seen my offensive style to be a problem. Although, there are some instances in Painkiller where it can hurt you… running straight into a chaingun isn’t very productive. We’ll see how it goes in the weeks to come when tournaments come around :p. As for promode, I think it does, but not as much as you’d think. If anything I think I got used to the movement in 30minutes what would take any other player 45 minutes. Game play in terms of the speed of the game I think I have a leg up on most players. Everything about promode is fast, which is very similar to the painkiller. I think my experience with promode will give me an advantage due to the fact of knowing how to control the map and fight with such speeds. This is for the same reason why I think Vo0 is such a dominating player in euroland currently.