Painkiller (PS5) Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Narrative

Summary: Some baffling design decisions mar what is otherwise a satisfying shooter.

3.5

Nailed it!

Anshar Studios’ Painkiller reboot nails the one thing it needed to do. It feels satisfying to pin demons to the wall with a stake gun.

Ultimately, that’s what Painkiller was about: killing vast hordes of demons with an arsenal of fantastical weapons and watching the buggers ragdoll after being hit with shuriken and electrocuted.

This is the main thing this reboot of the 2004 cult classic does perfectly by handing players an arsenal of distinct, powerful, and oddly palpable weapons.

Everything else feels sort of secondary, but anyone who actually remembers Painkiller knows that ultimately it’s a fast-paced Doom clone that leads players through a series of arenas to cut down the armies of hell before moving on to the next.

This latest version does this. However, it’s wrapped up in an unnecessary three-player cooperative live service shooter, with two modes: Raid, which sees players blast through nine set stages that essentially act as the game’s campaign, and the far less enjoyable Rogue Angel: that sees our team of sinners blast their way through procedurally generated levels ganinag new weapons and upgrades untill they die for loot – a basic rogue lite. I’m sure you know the drill by now.

The story, such as it is, is told mostly via in-game conversations between our party of three (though there are four characters to choose from) and the obnoxious ramblings of the Metatron and Azazel.

It’s essentially a loose retread of the original, but replace Daniel Garner with this group of lost souls and the armies of Lucifer for Azazel.

To be fair, it’s mostly background noise. I didn’t have any emotional investment in any of them, and I barely remember their names. I think one was called Ink, and another alluded to being a fallen angel at one point. I still haven’t pieced it all together, and after being told I wasn’t entirely useless for the twentieth time by a Metatron that is like a low-rent version of Alan Rickman’s take in Dogma, I don’t really care.

Thus, it’s up to our ragtag group of minor stat boosts to stop a horde of demons from rampaging through purgatory and somehow getting to Earth by gunning them all down.

The main crux of Painkiller sees you fighting through three different biomes with a fairly satisfying boss fight at the end of each third stage.

One’s gothic, one’s sandy, and one’s swampy. Despite the simple theming, though, each stage is well-constructed, and some nice twists to the gameplay in each make for a fun coop experience. At points, you’ll be filling up blood barrels to complete arcane rituals, keeping a monster towing an arcane relic moving by feeding it canisters of souls, and working together to trigger pressure pads and switches open gateways and grab secrets.

Most of the time, though, you’ll be fending off waves of enemies in what amounts to a series of arenas, similarly to the original Painkiller. (or modern Doom, just remember Painkiller did it first)

Though admittedly, your main way of grabbing more ammo is by grinding up foes with your handy dandy demonic weedwacker called the Painkiller (He said the thing!).

The moment-to-moment though reminds me of another People Can Fly classic. Bulletstorm. It’s fast, frenetic, score-based. And lets you slide around the levels, gunning down demons like you have a pair of rocket skates on (more people need to play Vanquish).

There’s also a fun sense of verticality to the fights, thanks to your ability to hookshot your way into the sky by grappling off floating skulls. It’s not perfect, though, because launching yourself this way requires you to perfectly pitch yourself at the skull because there’s only a small window where you can grab them, and you can only launch yourself straight forward. So you’ll often find yourself plummeting off the side of a cliff if you’re not careful.

Your arsenal can also be customised and expanded using the gold and ancient artifacts you earn by completing objectives and finding hidden chests strewn throughout each level, with some fairly obvious, others requiring teamwork to get to, and some cleverly concealed by the environment.

The only problem is that although you have access to six powerful weapons, including a shotgun that can freeze and shatter foes, a rocket launcher that can carpet bomb beasties with a single pull of the trigger, and the aforementioned electric shurikens and iconic stake gun, you can only equip two weapons at a time. This makes your ability to unlock and use more weapons seem pointless when you can just power up the first two and still turn everything effectively to mulch.

The problem is that there isn’t much to do. The raids can be completed in a handful of hours. You can go back and do them on harder difficulties, but that doesn’t change much. There are some extra costume colours to unlock, and you can also add modifiers to your runs by buying disposable tarot cards before you head out. But these collectible cards can be reactivated by using some artifacts, which, after you’ve found a few favourites, nixes the random part.

For what it is, it’s a well-made game, though, the character designs are decent enough, and some inventive moments and well-thought-out arenas, basic platforming sections, and considered level design break up what could have been a monotonous shooter.
The presentation is good, the music accompanying battles is the kind of metal you expect from this kind of descent into the afterlife, and it’s fine; it runs at a steady 60fps on the PS5 Pro even when the levels get swamped with thralls and angry demons. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

You can play online or offline with some decent bots that do a good job of killing enemies, but not keeping you alive.

One thing to note, though, the online and offline modes have separate character progression for reasons best known to the almighty. I found this out after spending a couple of hours offline to try and get the basics down before jumping into some quick games online, annnd. All my upgrades are gone and I’m forced to replay the tutorial… Why?

Final Thoughts

Painkiller 2025 is a game that nails the assignment but, in many ways, misses the point. The core of the experience is spot on. The moment-to-moment, the feel of the weapons, the slightly cheeky tone. There’s even some half-decent writing and world-building buried in those quippy conversations between our heroes,

What could have been an incredible single-player shooter to rival the original has been reduced to a mostly forgettable cooperative online crack at yet another game as a service thing that doesn’t really satisfy anyone, and makes me wonder why no one at the four companies attached to this didn’t at some point question whether this was the best form for a Painkillr reboot to take.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Painkiller (PS5) Review