Artwork by mav^ric

Painkiller is known to be a game of high speeds and quick reflexes. However, the CPL World Tour game might soon receive a crucial change of pace. Due to the emergence of the competitive mod, PK++, and the new features and changes they have introduced to the game, the CPL has been hard pressed to accept some of these new changes into competition. Many of the top Painkiller players have been pushing that these changes be made.

One of these controversial changes is the rocketfix. This affects the way rockets work in-game. In the current Painkiller version of 1.64 and in every version since 1.61, the game was sped up significantly. In these versions, a rocket jump, which consists of shooting a rocket at your own feet to reach a previously unreachable area, would result in a massive boost of speed that sent you flying around the map.

Most people would think, "Hey cool. Faster = more exciting." Goes to show that most people are wrong. This sudden boost of speed allowed players to escape nearly every tight situation with little or no effort at all. A simple shot at the ground and they were across the map. Players argued that this allowed less experienced players to gain an unfair advantage, and that the primary focus of aiming and making the tactical decisions native to DM games, was lost due to the high speed escape. Also, when an opponent was shot with a rocket, instead of being pushed by the momentum, he was propelled even faster in his current direction. This also allowed for extremely easy getaways.

A big problem resulted from this increase in speed. As a spectator of Painkiller, you had little to no idea what was going on unless you played the game yourself and even then the game moved a little too fast. Since the success of the World Tour and of gaming as a whole is based around spectator interest, something had to be done not just for the players but for the fans as well.

Luckily, we have the great guys making PK++ to fix such a problem. Recently they released the rocketfix in a patch of PK++, which resulted in a lot of chatter in the scene. Essentially what the rocketfix does is reset the rocket properties previously mentioned to be problems, back to how they were in Painkiller version 1.35, considered by many to be the best version. The rockets in that version resulted in less height and speed after a rocket jump as well as the correct speed change when you are shot with one. This has resulted in a slightly mixed response from the community. Many of the top tier players want this change to be implemented right away. Several lesser known players want the speed of the game to remain unchanged. However, there are many more people pushing for it to be used. In a recent poll taken by Tonya Welch of CPL, with the choices being rocketfix or no rocketfix, rocketfix won overwhelmingly. In Europe, it is being pushed by big names like Stephan "SteLam" Lammert and in the US, Brian "zen" Grapatin from Fatal1ty's own team is behind the change.

As a Painkiller player myself, I fully support the change as well. I believe it does increase the skill level required to be successful as well as make the game easier to watch by spectators, as it is much easier to comprehend what is going on. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming stop in Spain runs with the new settings and maybe, just MAYBE, we might see someone take down the almighty Vo0.