Painkiller Review – Running on Empty

Painkiller Review

The original Painkiller debuted in 2004 and went on to spawn 7 additional related games, ending with Painkiller: Hell and Damnation in 2012. For a few years, it was even a hit with competitive gamers. For a 21-year-old game, the original still looks pretty good, and what’s still surprising, has a rather more convoluted plot than your typical Doom or Quake cousin. However, aside from the name and a tangential narrative connection, the all-new 2025 Painkiller has no relationship to the original.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The new Painkiller shares the thinnest veneer of story with the 2004 game. The first game had you trying to escape Purgatory to be reunited with your wife in Heaven. In the new game, you and your fellow quartet of characters are again in Purgatory, caught in an ongoing fight between the angel Metatron and the demon Azazel. Still, saying the story matters in the 2025 Painkiller is a wild hyperbole. The story sounds metal enough, but it’s told with a lot of snarky, jokey asides that undercut taking any of it seriously.

Squad Up

Painkiller is a co-op, squad-based shooter, although there is an offline mode that fills in human players with bots. Yes, that’s still a thing in 2025. The single player mode has some utility, I guess, if you’re trying to learn the game’s mechanics and levels and try out weapons. The bots do a passable job in support roles and don’t need to be revived too often. But they’re not the same as playing the game with three shit-talking buddies.

Speaking of levels, there are three “raids” made up of three chapters/biomes each, with a boss at the end. Add to that a randomized roguelike mode, and you have Painkiller’s current slate of content. The levels and zones themselves are visually arresting and graphically dense with lighting effects and detail. The design is interesting, with some verticality, well-placed jump pads, hazards, and hidden rooms.

You rarely have time to notice the environments much, because 100% of your time is fending off waves of highly mobile enemies. One of Painkiller’s weaknesses is that it has exactly one approach to combat: frenetic. It’s good bloody fun and enjoyably intense for a while, until it just becomes exhausting and repetitive.

Weapons of Choice

In between raids, you squad up, level up, and gear up at your little slice of Purgatory. There’s a robust selection of fun-to-use weapons, each with a slew of imaginative upgrades. Weapons and their various ways of dispatching and dismembering enemies are the standout stars of Painkiller. There’s not a lick of coherent storytelling embedded in the weapon design. Seemingly, if they fit the mission of destruction, Steampunk, fantasy, modern, or classic takes on video game weapons are all good. It’s one of Painkiller’s best qualities.

Aside from upgrading your weapons, there’s a Tarot card mechanic for match-specific buffs and special abilities, which you purchase with in-game currency. Then you squad up or add some bots, and you’re ready to roll. The raid design means that if you run out of healing or revives, it’s match over. There are no mid-mission saves.

The enemies move so quickly that it’s hard to register them, but they’re mostly standard fare, gothic heavy metal monsters in different varieties of strength and with various attacks. They’re not tactical or strategic, but they do have enough ways to kill you that situational awareness is important. I played the game on PC with an Xbox controller, but I understand that on PS5, the game makes excellent use of the DualSense controller’s capabilities.

Graphically, Painkiller is no slouch, and it runs relatively well. The audio aspects are less impressive, with a generic metal soundtrack that never rises above sonic wallpaper and voice acting that can be pretty mediocre. Not that it matters much.

Made for Many

I’ll give Painkiller props for its imaginative weapons, sharp visuals, and visceral combat. It’s a hollow and transitory experience for solo players offline, and you can see what Painkiller has to offer in very short order. As a co-op game, it fares better. Still, I can’t imagine Painkiller becoming any shooter fan’s obsession. The nuts and bolts of what could be an impressive game are there, but in its present form, there’s simply too much repetition and too few surprises.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***