If you’re out of the loop, Painkiller was a Boomer Shooter originally launched in 2004 that saw several expansions to the game up until 2012. Each and every expansion bounced around to a new developer, but originally, this was a People Can Fly title, the same team that went on to make the OG Gears Of War.
While Painkiller never quite caught on like Gears, or some other franchises that it’s clearly heavily inspired by, it’s still a pretty iconic, beloved franchise with a lot of diehard fans. It was cool, then, to see that after lying dormant for so many years, the series was getting relaunched/rebooted in 2025 at the hands of Anshar Studios, who mostly notably worked with Bloober Team on Layers Of Fear.
Let me get this out of the way early; I’m not totally interested in reviewing this 2025 reboot through the lens of the 2004 title at all. To me, this is a reboot from a new team, and I’m going to treat it as such. I don’t think it’s fair to hold the game to a previous 20+ year standard that’s now flooded with tons of nostalgia-influenced points of view. Let’s treat this one as a new entry to the FPS scene in 2025, shall we?
All of that said… Painkiller 2025 left a lot to be desired, a reboot of a beloved franchise or not. While I don’t think it’s a bad experience to embark on, I also don’t feel like there’s enough here to push it to the top of your must-play list with other, more viable direct competitors out there these days. Let’s dig in.
Stunning, But Uneven Presentation With A Dead End Story
Where I will give Painkiller some major props is in the world design. There are nine raids/levels to work your way through, equally spaced between three different biomes. These places look amazing, and have a premium-feeling sheen with every design and art direction choice clearly extremely well-thought-out. You’re stuck in Purgatory, lodged in an attempt to stave off Azazel the fallen angel’s demonic forces and Nephilim, who are in the middle of a hostile takeover.
One biome is a Hellish, industrial factory, then an eery, dark cave system, followed by a trek that eventually leads to the Tree Of Knowledge in a fallen version of the Garden Of Eden itself. Everything looks amazing, and is thoroughly disturbing enough to make the former youth group kid in my past wonder if he really should be experiencing such demonic visions (if my mom asks, killing demons makes me the good guy, so it’s okay).
From there, the story itself is passable, but never actually feels that interesting. This is a co-op shooter (even when playing offline/solo, you’ll be required to take two bot teammates with you), featuring four stock characters each with a different, unique background. There’s a guy that fought a demon in a pharmacy, a former hired gun of The Creator, a half demon/half human reverend, and another woman who used to be a queen, or something. I don’t really know.
Basically, everyone is in Purgatory for some random reason, and the angel Metatron (not a Transformer) has roped you into fighting off Azazel’s forces as a way to expedite your sentence. But is everything truly as it seems? Well, of course not. Still, nothing ever really pays off in a satisfying way, and the game kind of just ultimately ends, as if it’s waiting for a future content drop to wrap things up more succinctly.
There’s a prevalent comedic tone throughout Painkiller too, and that will work for some, but not others. It’s little, weird, Marvel-style quips from your characters, or Metatron telling you that Azazel cheats at poker. My least favorite line in the whole game was, “I’m Azazel, but you can call me daddy.” Tempting, but I’m not super interested.
The sound design is great, but I had several issues with clipping, overlap, and random volume spikes pretty often. The soundtrack is DOOM-style metal, which is passable, but never feels like more than a worse knockoff.
Even offline, I’d also experience my teammates and enemies alike zipping around arenas like their connection was dropping, which made several combat encounters feel bad. Some enemies would also occasionally start individually moving as if only they were specifically, individually dropping frames. The online experience worked about the same, so it was just interesting to me that offline shared so many little hiccups.
Absolutely Awesome Weaponry
Without any forthcoming caveats to drop after this next statement, Painkiller’s guns are freaking awesome. From the get-go, you have a rapid-fire Shuriken-launching gun called the Electrodriver. I thought nothing else would top this starting weapon, but then I got the ridiculously heavy-hitting shotgun. This was my new favorite for a while, but then I got the SMG. Let me tell you, it’s also sick.
There are six weapons in total, and they all feel and perform fantastically. It’s one of the coolest, most powerful, satisfying arsenals I’ve used in any shooter ever. This is all amplified by the fact that Anshar Studios went the extra mile on PS5 to amazingly implement both unique haptic rumble feedback for each gun, as well as different trigger pulling sensations thanks to the adaptive triggers.
Not many teams go out of their way for these little details anymore, and I’ll go to my grave saying that they’re some of the coolest things that can be featured in this current console generation. There’s a genuine lack of adoption and usage of the haptics and adaptive triggers across third-party PS5 devs, so hats off for this extra effort.
Every firearm also has customizable alt-fire and proficiency upgrades you can unlock once you hit certain performance thresholds. These fully deck out each gun in super rad ways, especially if you take a skill tree route to make a weapon inflict elemental damage like ice, fire, or electricity. The animations for all of these additional powers look amazing.
Painkiller’s guns are freaking awesome.
And don’t even get me started on the designs of the weapons themselves. They all look incredible, with some weird melding of steampunk, Gothic, and sci-fi all somehow working together at the same time. This results in some of my favorite looking firearms in all of gaming, truly. I have no notes nor complaints about the weaponry available here.
Well… except that it’s a bit of a grind to unlock all six options, and it feels totally unnecessary. I really can’t wrap my head around the need to lock four guns behind in-game currency paywalls (all earned in game, not with real money), except for trying to keep players in the game longer to keep unlocking more options. The problem is, it all just takes too long (especially if you’re spending the currency on anything else within the game), and there’s not enough actual content to make the grind worth it.
Not Enough Variety
Whether you’re playing with two real humans, two bots, or a combination, Painkiller doesn’t have a ton of actual content. For a franchise known for huge, hulking, imposing bosses, there are just three here in total, each serving as the finale of a collection of three raids within the three different biomes.
It all just kind of blends together at a certain point.
This means there are nine levels in total, and while the theming changes, the vibe of the gameplay is just about always the same. You’ll clear out waves of enemies in arenas, highlighted by a couple of elite/mini-boss enemies along the way. You’ll fill blood canisters to open gates by killing enemies within the radius of the canister itself. You’ll throw lanterns into a bigger lantern to open more gates. You’ll have a far too long and boring escort mission to guide an important ark to its destination.
That’s about it. In fairness, the combat does feel fun for a while, but for me, it also quickly devolved into “spray and pray” territory as I just ran, slid, jumped, and grappled around yet another arena with the same hordes of enemies over and over again. Enemy variety wears out, so it all just kind of blends together at a certain point.
Nothing else is ever really thrown into the mix. There are some secret rooms you can open for your teammates by standing on pressure panels, but it’s just to grab some extra currency or maybe some healing or ammo drops. There are small side paths you can do some basic platforming on to earn some more currency, but it never feels great.
The three bosses are cool looking, but either have unclear gimmicks to defeat or just end up feeling like damage sponges with attack patterns that don’t feel great to dodge ever. And since all these levels are actually raids, if you happen to fail at the boss encounter, you’ll have to slog back through the entire, repetitive level again to get another attempt.
The variety wears out, so one playthrough of everything has been plenty for me.
There’s also a little Roguelike mode that’s been added, which has a randomly generated seed of a list of random objectives in random arenas to complete before concluding with one of the three same bosses randomly selected at the end. It’s a nice addition, but doesn’t actually add much that’s worthwhile or interesting to the formula. It’s just an even more linear way to experience the same action and objectives.
I got through absolutely everything offered and tested both offline and online in one single sitting. While there are different difficulties to attempt, and character skins I suppose you can agonize over grinding for, I personally don’t think there’s much of a need to replay raids or try new Rogue runs. The variety wears out, so one playthrough of everything has been plenty for me.
We Have DOOM At Home
I don’t like making direct comparisons to other franchises, but it’s genuinely impossible to play this 2025 version of Painkiller without just thinking about the newer DOOM games the entire time. From the demon slaying, to the insane weapons, to the metal music, the vibe is all there.
Painkiller does have the co-op/squad-based/raid-based formula added into the mix, but it doesn’t actually amount to enough to set the game apart in any worthwhile way. The game is just as fun with real human counterparts or bots, and is in fact worse with randos if you’re the only one that knows what they’re doing. I found myself preferring to play with bot teammates, and then, what’s really the point?
The formula and moment-to-moment gameplay loop in DOOM isn’t leagues above Painkiller. I mean, you’re still going to be doing a lot of arena clearing and grappling around arenas as you blast anything that gets too close to you in the face.
The difference is in the thoughtfulness (or lack thereof) of actual enemy placements. In DOOM, you’re fighting a lot of demons at once, but it feels like there’s thinking behind where they spawn on the map, their abilities, and the number you’re pitted against at once.
In Painkiller, it just feels like “Hey, here’s a giant, incomprehensible mass of bodies on the screen. Mow them down, it’s gonna be awesome.” Sometimes it is, but more often than not, the screen is just a giant cluster of bullets, detonations, and combo counters ticking up and up while you really don’t even know what’s going on half the time.
Aside from the truly stellar guns and some of the awesome-looking locations, Painkiller is going to be a complete victim of comparison. It’s not doing enough to stand out on its own, and it ends up feeling like “We have DOOM at home,” just with a few people along for the ride this time.
Closing Comments:
Painkiller has some truly incredible weapons and powers, but not a lot to do with them. I saw everything the game had to offer in one sitting, and while there is replayability, the repetitive and boring objectives prevent me from wanting to keep going. The game looks awesome, but falls into generic territory in several ways, while also adopting a lot of that Marvel-esque vibe we’re all tired of. It’s reductive to say, but we already have DOOM at home.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
