Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: Mindware Studios
System requirements: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core 5200+ CPU; Radeon HD 3870 or GeForce 8800 GT or better video card; 2 GB RAM; approximately 11 GB of HD space; DVD drive (for non-Steam version)
Genre: Shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Marcus Spears

Take a cup of Serious Sam’s swarms of bad guys, a measure of Painkiller’s unique weapons, a dash of the paranormal abilities in Psychonauts, and mix well. The result might look something like Dreamkiller, a new first-person shooter developed by Mindware Studios. You take on the role of Alice Drake, a psychiatrist with the unique ability to enter a patient’s mind through his or her dreams, find out what’s gone wrong and “fix” it.

Dreamkiller has a thin plot spanning four acts, each with four levels. You start by reading a synopsis of a patient file and the phobias he has. This gives you some idea what kind of opposition to expect. For example, the dreams of a patient with arachnophobia are populated with SOUS (that’s “Spiders of Unusual Size” if you haven’t seen “The Princess Bride”) and spider-taurs, for lack of a better word. Someone with a fear of being overworked has dreams full of cyborg versions of his co-workers, with a few mechanical spiders thrown in for good measure.

You start every mission with just the Dragon’s Grasp, one of six unique weapons in the game (you can carry only two at a time), each of which has a primary and secondary fire mode. The Dragon’s Grasp is a short-range flamethrower with a secondary attack that can push back and damage entire groups of monsters. The other weapons are the Minigun, Hailstorm (a shotgun that can also shoot energy balls that temporarily freeze the target), Shock Therapy, Sunbeam (a laser weapon whose secondary shot fires happy thoughts, to which enemies flock), and the Dream Cleaner.

There are four power bars on the edges of the HUD. In addition to the standard health and experience bars, there is a concentration bar (Alice’s weapons are powered by her concentration, which slowly replenishes after use) and a berserk meter. When you chain kill enough enemies, you enter a berserk mode in which you’re treated to a grainy, washed-out vision of the world, with enemies displayed in red. While you’re berserk, you have increased speed and do much more damage with your weapons. The berserk bar drains slowly when you’re not killing enemies, much faster when you’re using it. When it’s empty, the berserk mode ends. You start each level with three lives, but this isn’t much of a setback because the game automatically saves your progress. You can simply choose to continue at the last checkpoint with zero experience and the Dragon’s Grasp.

Here’s where the problems begin. First, you can’t get lost in a level. The game locks you in an area, sends swarms of enemies at you, and then points you towards the next area when you’ve killed all of them. It automatically saves your progress as you enter each new area, but there’s no manual save option, which is inexcusable in any PC shooter. Secondly, you can’t save up your berserk energy and use it when you need it. You enter berserk mode automatically whenever the bar fills up. It makes no sense to me for a mild-mannered psychiatrist to go berserk, and even less sense to not be able to save the power for when it’s really important. Finally, the Dragon’s Grasp, with which you start each level, is practically useless. The primary fire requires you to get too close to a swarm of enemies, and secondary fire (which is admittedly much more useful) takes a few seconds to charge for maximum effect.

Having said that, I enjoyed this game. The visuals are colorful, some of the enemies are legitimately awesome, and the premise is neat. It has modest requirements – you don’t need a state-of-the-art system to play – and a budget price point. It’s unfortunately very repetitive and not very addictive, and Mindware has made some questionable design decisions, such as the lack of a manual save system. As a result, the game is better for stress relief than anything else, a source of mindless entertainment as you blast away at hordes of bad guys.

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