Painkiller Review

Painkiller has players stuck in Purgatory, sentenced for your transgressions against Heaven. However, the Voice of the Creator gives you a chance to redeem yourself by attempting to stop fallen angel Azazel as he is about to unleash his demonic armies onto Earth. As one of four generic character classes, you’ll face endless waves of demons on your way to redemption.

Painkiller was originally a story driven balls to the walls FPS single player experience; imagine this as DOOM’s little brother. But for the 2025 iteration, the development team decided to go the opposite route: a team based/objective focused shooter. You and your friends will jump into a handful of levels to collect gold and shoot demons.

Each level has the same template: move around the area, find a few enemies, reach a locked area where you have to either survive a handful of waves or complete a objective while having to survive the onslaught. Some objectives are pick up a blood barrel and kill enemies within its surface area to fill it up to use it as a key or feed a creature with lamp like item so they keep moving.

The prologue leads you to a Church like establishment that will act as your base in between raids. You’ll be able to buy/unlock new guns, including mods to give your weapon an extra kick. You’ll also be able to acquire magical cards giving players extra perks during raids such as 10% damage reduction or get twice the gold at the end of a raid; for example. New cards can be obtained via lottery that’s 3000 Gold. Also throughout your raids you can pick up consumable items such as health or ammo that can be shared with the group.

In terms of weaponry, it’s surprisingly limited. A total of six weapons; from a stake thrower to rocket launcher. Obtaining weapons requires both money and ancient souls. You can unlock modes with Ancient souls. Each weapon has two path. You can unlock both branch for each weapon, but obviously install one at a time. For example, the shotgun has a freezing or slow alternative fire. Each can also be upgraded.

The game has two main game modes; Raids and Rogue Angel. The former is 3 areas each with 3 levels. Simply survive and get through to unlock the next level. The final one including a boss fight. You’ll collect gold and coins. Whereas the latter is similar to a survival mode. Go through each area until you reach the end or die/lose all your lives. For example, some areas will have you run/dash as you constantly suffer damage; reach a spot where you need to kill all enemies and keep going.

The game looks fine; nothing wrong here, but it definitely won’t compete with the Call of Duty and Battlefield games of this world. This could have been a launch title for the Xbox One in 2013; it might’ve left a bigger visual impact back in the day. There’s a decent, albeit limited, variety in terms in environment. Enemy design is fine as a whole; bosses are massive with their hellish design. On the audio side of things, voiceover work is fine, nothing really groundbreaking; just no emotions, but again I wouldn’t expect any. The soundtrack is the typical type in terms of these games; ambient, quiet tunes as you walk around but once enemies start appearing in drove, some generic hard rock/metal-ish music kicks in.

The game does have a few issues. As you’ve realized by now, this isn’t the beloved single player experience we once knew. This is basically Left 4 Dead in hell. Also, there’s a season pass for future content as expected given the new direction of the game. And the other problem is that it’s an always online game; even with the offline/solo experience which is absolutely baffling. Also for a shooter, the amount of weapon is surprisingly low. Also the colletaral damage from explosive barrels is insane. Even if you’re not in range, if it’s in your line of sight, you’ll get damage.

If you’re looking for a classic Painkiller experience, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking for another multiplayer experience akin to Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, then this Painkiller is for you. Solo or not, this is an enjoyable, albeit shallow experience. Limited level variety, shockingly low quantity of weapon, but the gameplay itself is quite solid and addictive. The shooting is fun, mods on weapons also give a bit of variety.