Gather around, dear children, and allow me to tell you the tale ofPainkiller, a fast-paced FPS originally from 2004 back when the world was ruled by Myspace, Paris Hilton, and Shrek 2 (in order of importance).
Thisboomer-shootermost easily comparable toDOOMin violence, gunplay, and metal music, was originally created by People Can Fly, the team also behind Bulletstorm, Outriders, and some occasional work on Gears of War.
Despite a lot of actual love for the series from critics and fans alike, it’s laid dormant since 2012, just waiting for someone to come along and resurrect it. My friends, it’s about that time.
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Now in the hands of Anshar Studios, who have largely been a support studio for powerhouse developers like Bloober Team and Larian Studios, Painkiller is primed to make a comeback later this year. While the DNA of the original series is stillverymuch alive and well, this reboot/continuation of the franchise should fit right in nicely with the 2025 shooter landscape.
I recently got to view a presentation from the team about Painkiller full of enlightening information before they allowed me to jump in and give the game a test drive myself. After getting a brief training intro and a couple of missions under my belt, I’m definitely adding this one to my list ofgames to keep an eye on throughout the rest of 2025.
All screenshots below were provided courtesy of the developers.
Hell Of A Presentation
At first glance, the new Painkiller definitely looks and sounds like a modern DOOM game. There’s not really any avoiding that. Still, it’s not like there’s a trademark on shooters where you’re fighting demons, and Painkiller has every bit of a right to utilize a setting of this nature. It also justworks, andevery location I saw looked awesome.
Of course, the comparison goes a bit deeper as well with the metal soundtrack that also kicks in during combat sections of the game. While Mick Gordon’s DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal soundtracks are likely to never be topped in the genre, what’s here in Painkiller is still super fun and had me bobbing my head along with each and every chug of a crunchy guitar.
While I only got to experience the early stages of this game, the story setup seems like it will be entertaining enough for sure. Fallen angel Azazel is building an army of the damned capable of taking over Earth, and it’s going to be up to you and your team to do your best to prevent this from happening.
You’ll soon also learn, however, that you’ve got a little more background than just “DOOM Guy has gun and shoots demons.” For whatever reason, you and your squadmates are in Purgatory, and you owe it to The Creator to step in and thwart this growing demonic threat before it’s too late – for Earth, and likely for Heaven itself.
All of this information comes from a seemingly omniscient and omnipresent entity named Metatron, who functions as a narrator that your character can also talk back to and interact with. The dialogue I heard from Metatron was surprisingly hilarious at times, with little jabs like, “I guess you didn’t pay attention enough in Sunday School.”
…the game already seems very well optimized.
You and the members of your team will also chatter back and forth, which is mostly fun, but also occasionally runs the risk of being just alittletoo quippy, though it never wore out its welcome with me in this preview. Regardless, it’s fun to see Painkiller take a bit of a humorous approach in addition to the edgy, metal-music-infused setting of this industrialized, demon-infested portrayal of Purgatory.
I demoed the game on PC, and I’ll be the first to tell you that my computer is not exactly a powerhouse. It gets the job done, but I typically can’t run things as well as I’d like to. Painkiller looked like a game with a lot of moving parts all operating at a high level of visual fidelity, so I wasn’t sure how my rig would handle it.
It was awesome to see that even in this preview build state,the game already seems very well optimized. I ran it on High settings and still was comfortably hanging out at or above 100 frames per second, which is definitely not always the case for my setup. If you have a half-respectable rig and want to play this game on PC, it seems like you definitely should be able to with little compromise.
I’m gonna level with all of you – I am not typically a squad-based, multi-player gamer.I reviewed Elden Ring Nightreignearlier this year, and it wasn’t for me despite the base game being one of my favorite titles of all-time. Ifthatgame didn’t get its hooks in me, would anything else in the genre ever have a chance?
A lot of these feelings come from a place of simply feeling like I’m missing out on something if I’m playing with a group. It just kind of annoys me that, often times, I’m not the one in control, and my teammates are just free to mow down enemies and complete objectives while I’m busy doing something else.
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Because of this, I was originally disappointed to hear that Painkiller was also going with this same format. The entire game is played with a squad of three players, which can be either you and real people, or a team of two bots (or one real/one bot). There is no option to play this reimagining of Painkiller completely alone.
Against all odds and bias I personally had going into a squad-based game, I was shocked once I started actually playing to very quickly learn thatPainkiller simply rules regardless. Even playing with bots, this is a game that has a rip-roaring good time and is so fast-paced and high energy that you constantly feel engaged and like you have a purpose.
Even so, I still think I’ll personally prefer bots to real people when I jump into the full version of Painkiller later this year. If you’re like me and think you’ll prefer the same, I’m happy to report thatmy bot teammates never got on my nerves and rarely let me down in combat in such ways that would typically be frustrating.
Everyone followed me around appropriately while doing their part to take down any threats. I could ping locations for them to move to, and even tag specific enemies I’d like them to focus on, either as suppressive fire or so that we could all gang up on a bigger enemy and quickly take them down.
This works super well. One such larger field enemy had a completely impenetrable armored front, and I was struggling to kill it on my own. Luckily, I could ping my team to attack it head on, and while they had the enemy distracted, I was free to flank it and take it down from its exposed backside.
Bot teammates also share ammo and health between arenas, and you may do the same for them in order to keep them in tip-top shape. They’re also really great at doing their best to revive you if you happen to fall in combat and lose one of your three lives during a mission. It really seems likeplayers like me can still play this game “solo” and have a great time with their bot buddies.
A Shooter With Synergy
Regardless of how you ultimately decide to construct your squad of three, Painkiller has plenty of awesome gameplay mechanics to make sure the action stays high-octane throughout. Let’s, of course, focus on the weaponry first. In this build, there were a total of six guns – stakegun, electodriver, shotgun, rocket launcher, hand cannon, and SMG.
If you think this doesn’t seem like atonof options, fear not. Each weapon also has a skilltree to unlock mind-boggling amounts of gameplay choices. In total,there are 72 weapon upgrades available that affect both your primary and alt fires. Each weapon also has elemental abilities, such as your typical fire, lightning, and ice. Personally, I think this level of customization is rad.
It all becomes a mosh pit of chaos as you mow down hordes (and I meanhordes) of demons that satisfyingly fly across the arena…
My favorite gun is the electodriver, which shoots streams of shuriken bullets at anything that dares stand in my way. This one also came with the ability to shock and stun enemies, which then allowed me to shred them to bits with my Painkiller weapon. The Painkiller doubles as your grappling hook as well as an unlimited-use twirling blade of death which causes enemies to drop ammo upon death.
The coolest thing is the synergy this creates with you and your squad matesas you experiment and learn which weapons and their elemental abilities work well together to take enemies down as quickly as possible. It all becomes a mosh pit of chaos as you mow down hordes (and I meanhordes) of demons that satisfyingly fly across the arena as you whittle down their numbers.
There are currently four characters to play as in Painkiller, and each has a unique perk to further properly synergize with your team. Roch is the tank and starts with 25 extra health points. Ink restores her energy at a 30% quicker rate. Void is the soldier and does 10% extra damage with all weapons. Sol is the support class and has 50% extra ammo capacity. Plan your team accordingly.
…the sheer number of ways to tweak your gear and loadout is extraordinarily cool.
The tarot card system is back and modernized. Basically, each character has two card slots, which you can use to equip single-use cards before a run to give yourself an edge right off the bat. You’ll obtain a pack of three random tarot cards (from a pool of 44), then decide which you’d like to use. These feature buffs like weapon damage +30%, damage reduction -10%, and energy restoration +30%.
Truly, everything just works great together, and the sheer number of ways to tweak your gear and loadout is extraordinarily cool. I love experimenting with badass weapons, abilities, and buffs in games. Painkiller seems like it’s going to let me do that regularly, and I’m excited to nail down my favorite combinations.
All of this customization takes place in a small hub world where you’ll finalize your loadout before jumping into a new raid. Yes, this is a raid-based game. If this scares you like it initially did me,I have good news once again.
Raids For Days
I’m not a raid guy (surprise, surprise), but Painkiller might turn me into one. Each level is a replayable raid with an adjustable difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the more rewards you get to come back home with to upgrade your gear further. Raids all seem to feature DOOM-esque rooms full of waves of enemies to clear out, some actually decent platforming, and fun objectives to progress.
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Most notable was a recurring mechanic where my squad and I would have to fill up a tank with demon blood in order to then use the blood tank as a sort of key to unlock doors or power on/off some kind of contraption in the world. This is done by placing a tank on the ground, then killing enough enemies within a certain radius to fill it up with blood completely.
This creates a sort of “Reverse Capture The Flag” vibe where you’re actually trying to draw enemies to a certain point on the map to kill them at this POI. This then turns into OG Halo-style CTF momentarily where someone must pick up the full blood tank and safely run it to its deposit location while being protected by the other teammates during this short trek.It’s thrilling.
There are other unique-feeling moments for the genre along the way. Traversal feels really good between using your grappling hook to launch you across an area or to climb up a platforming section, and well as dashing for extra jump distance or to quickly get out of danger.
If you are familiar with OG Painkiller, you know it’s famous for havinghulkingbosses to take down periodically, including some that are genuinely skyscraper-sized. The team assured us that these massively-scaled boss fights would be present in this new iteration of Painkiller, but they’re keeping further details tight-lipped at the moment to ensure they all remain a total surprise for players.
My demo ended at the end of my second raid, right when I got dropped into a boss arena that had lead-up to it that felt straight out of a FromSoftware title. When I got my first glimpse of the truly terrifying beast of a boss, I was greeted with a friendly “Thank you for playing” message from the team, teasing me withwhat looked like it was about to be a banger of a boss fight.
I’ll point out that the arena for this boss fight was pretty small and circular, which felt like it was really going to put my bot squad and me to the test, as we’d have to coordinate to safely take this thing down before it pummeled us onto the ground. Just having this tease of an awesome-looking boss fighthas me truly excited to see what surprises Painkiller will have in store for us at launch.
Painkiller is slated to release this year on October 9th, just in time to start getting into the Halloween spirit. The announcement has already been made that it will be available on PC, PlayStation, and XBOX with cross-play as a native feature, which will hopefully make coordinating with a squad a breeze. It’ll cost $39.99 at launch, and my expectation is that it’ll be more than worth it.
