Painkiller makes a noble attempt to be more than just a basic arena shooter that three friends can blitz through for a spot of fun. But the sparse content and lack of truly meaningful endgame can be churned through just like its demon hordes.
After putting in almost 20 hours with Painkiller, I had seen everything the game had to offer dozens of times over. Yet I still had the itch to play.
For a game as sparse and repetitive as Painkiller is, such a time investment when I had numerous other games to play should be an indictment to its quality. And while I had played its multiple arenas several times over and over again to the point I had memorized them, and while I had splattered the viscera of hellish fiends thousands of times, I thought, “Sure, I can do another.”
Painkiller is a testament to crafting a game that fundamentally feels good to play. While plenty of titles can burst through the finish line on a breathtaking story and layered mechanics, a weakened core represents a flimsy foundation–one that could topple almost any game. In light of Painkiller having so little to do, its breezy and bombastic shooting bears the brunt of any dead weight to be found. More so, grouping together with friends not only amplifies the fun, it maintains necessary momentum to prevent exhaustion from creeping in.
For brevity and sanity’s sake, let us not dawdle on Painkiller‘s shriveled story. Four hapless “protagonists” have unwittingly found themselves in the midst of the fallen angel Azazel’s invasion of Earth. As penance for their transgressions against Heaven, Metatron, seemingly the voice of God, orders the quartet to atone through bloodshed. These four characters, Metatron, and Azazel are the sole players in this drama but in the midst of so much demonic gunfire and explosions, you would be forgiven for barely following what’s going on.
These characters all feel wronged, that they paid their dues to get into heaven. Metatron sarcastically and often rudely hurls accusations, commanding them at a whim. Ink, Sol, Void, and Roch have quips, there’s relatively extensive lore tucked behind a codex, and almost all of it is forgotten in the chaos of gameplay. The characters will speak to each other and relay their backstory but progressing to a new arena will cut off the dialog, almost as an acknowledgement that you may not entirely care.
As a world, Painkiller isn’t uniquely hellish when compared to any contemporaries. There’s pools of fire, poison jungles, and demonic forges. Aspects of its backgrounds and skyboxes present clever ideas that feel unique but are primarily set dressing or one-off moments that still don’t offer vastly different content from what the game presents whole-cloth.
Worse yet is that when players finish the “Raid” mode of Painkiller–which consists of 9 levels spread across 3 biomes–there’s no ultimate challenge or payoff. A new room simply opens up that presents some dialog and a blunt in-game acknowledgement to “play on a harder difficulty” as if most of us hadn’t already been doing that in the first place.
Let me be frank. I don’t need a deep narrative in Painkiller or other games of its type. Sure, they are nice and can include funny one-liners and offer enriching worlds that I think about long after the game is over. But what’s most important in terms of any world-building is just to have fascinating or cool places to shoot things in and allow those arenas to provide players with avenues to develop the core mechanics.
Painkiller‘s biomes frequently lack the over-the-top metal album cover vibe of games like DOOM or Metal: Hellsinger. Its brand of demons and evil is merely borderline rote. And, if it’s important to note, this is coming from a player who has no knowledge of prior games in the Painkiller series outside the fact that they exist. In-mission objectives amount to standing on points that may drain energy from an evil source, kill enemies in proximity to a blood tank to insert into a nefarious machine, or survive hordes of meanies.
The beating heart of Painkiller is an arena shooter. Here players blast away with guns in open areas that have varying degrees of heights and traps to navigate. Jump on cliffs to get a vantage point, kite groups around but watch out for spikes and poison. All the objectives meant to push players along are dead simple and literally just require mass death, just sometimes in small pockets.
Fodder enemies usually flood the screen meant to go down in one or two hits, while bigger, proper demons spawn with a frequency based on what difficulty has been selected. These include a hulking minotaur that soaks up hits, a warden that can capture and remove a player from the action if not felled, and a particularly annoying demon that drops down slowing poison pools and often disappears underground. In terms of variety, it’s fine. But none of the enemy designs are particularly mind-blowing or unique. Again, though, so many of them go down so fast it’s hard to care or keep track.
Players have the option to play as one of the four characters and each gets a bonus: a health boost, a damage boost, more ammo capacity, or more energy capacity. I never truly felt a major difference in either outside of Roch’s flat +25 health and that’s mostly because when I matchmade into a party, I took over his bot. Painkiller makes shooting interesting by giving its guns no magazines, just one constant clip to pull from. Lose all your ammo and players can pull out the titular Painkiller gun which can saw through the meat of fodder enemies to earn bonus ammunition. But players can also find consumable items like ammo and health drops or lures to pull in enemy attention.
What developer Anshar Studios smartly does it not bog down the game with too much to do. The objectives are simple, getting into the action is simple. It’s all relatively painless. That’s both a blessing and a curse.
Painkiller simply does not have enough content to support its value proposition. Its “Raids” constitute the campaign mode but each level can probably be beaten in about 10 or 15 minutes. Its boss fights are kind of cool but still over far too fast. Questionably, four main characters can be played but parties can only consist of three players. Four difficulty modes are available but it’s most basic difficulty is practically a joke for the target demographic of players who would engage with Painkiller for any length of time.
And honestly, the game’s milquetoast “games as a service” trappings simply don’t go far enough for my tastes, making their incorporation almost questionable.
In Painkiller, players earn gold and Ancient Souls, currency that will provide them with upgrades meant to help tackle harder difficulties. Gold is used to buy tarot cards that provide flat buffs for the duration of a Raid. Whether it’s supplementing damage types, adding buffs at varying health levels, or doing unique things, the tarot cards are interesting but I never found them to be drastically game-changing. After a Raid, the cards are burned and players must either spend gold to purchase one from a random draw or spend Ancient Souls to take the card back.
Both currencies are also used to purchase and upgrade the six guns available. The Stake Gun fires wooden stakes meant to nail enemies to the wall. The Shotgun, Hand Cannon, SMG, and Rocket Launcher are mainly what one would expect while the Electro Driver rapidly fires shurikens that can bounce around enemies. By completing weapon challenges, players unlock new mod tracks that add flair to each weapon. The SMG can have concussive bursts, the Stake Gun can fire drills, and the Rocket Launcher can shoot smaller homing rockets. Additionally, each weapon has two alternate fire tracks that belong to a certain element. The Rocket Launcher may fire a beam of molten lava, while the Shotgun blasts pools of ice, and some weapons even fire elemental traps.
To compliment the fast and fluid movement of Painkiller, the weapons themselves aim and fire expertly well. Running and gunning is an absolute dream and makes mowing through scores of demons frantically enjoyable. Throw in a few other players and there’s a kind of chaos that makes the frustrations of the game wash away.
Yet there’s a nagging feeling that more could have been done. There’s no real incentive structure to continue playing Painkiller after a certain point. The benefit of playing on the Nightmare difficulty is that players are rewarded with more Ancient Souls and gold. But it’s so easy to settle into what feels like the “best” handful of guns and their modifiers. Usually anything that can lay down and elemental trap, like a gravity well or freezing pools work incredibly well to manage the hefty amount of enemies on screen. But even player skill and some alright tarot cards don’t provide a true sense of power.
Usually what keeps players chugging along with games like Destiny or roguelikes is the feeling of constantly earning power. Painkiller merely dials up the frequency and difficulty of enemies and that’s about it. There’s no modifiers that change the way mobs should be handled or provide boons and curses. It’s simply more health for the enemies, more frequent harder demons, and more damage inflicted upon the player.
Had new routes of progression been introduced to give players something to work towards, Painkiller would have given me more reason to stick around outside of “its core loop is fun.” Yes, that core loop is fun but I couldn’t imagine sticking past a potential Platinum trophy. The fact that your account can level up all the way to 9 and there are seemingly no tangible rewards outside of an eventual trophy or achievement for getting there makes me feel like something was stripped from the game during development.
What actually enticed me about Painkiller in the first place was the fact that it had a roguelike mode called Rogue Angel where players start fresh, battle through randomized areas, and earn rewards. But even that mode feels somewhat stunted. At the end of an arena, players can choose between either consumable drops, cards, or a weapon as their next path. Going for the weapon upgrade makes the most sense because it is the most tangible upgrade to have, even if it sticks with the offerings from the Raids. And even with the Rogue Angel mode, players are still doing the same things. With some more additional platforming sections where players slowly lose health as they race through sections needing to slide and grapple.
Painkiller has a strong base that any shooting game needs. Its weapons are a blast to use and get weird enough to make it satisfying to rip through constant droves of demons. But even that core conceit runs dry over time as the well of ideas simply can’t support limited maps, basic objectives, and not enough variety to keep the flame burning. It’s possible as new content rolls out with DLC, Painkiller may evolve into something greater but right now it can be enjoyed by a group of friends over a weekend or two, hoping to one day leave its limbo of what-ifs.
