Painkiller: The cult classic returns as a co-op arena shooter, delivering great gunplay but little of its original soul.
For people who grew up with the 2004 original Painkiller, the game was a huge surprise. It was a visceral, gothic first-person shooter from People Can Fly that stood tall alongside DOOM and Quake, offering pure, high-octane demon-slaying joy. The weapons were famous, the arenas were huge, and the game loop was so brutally satisfying that people are still playing it today, twenty years later.
The Polish developer became famous after making this game, and later went on to make Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment. It was quiet for a while after the last extension came out in 2012. A Polish company, Anshar Studios, worked with 3D Realms to bring Painkiller into the modern era after it had been dormant for years.
In 2025, they changed the single-player gothic attack into a three-player co-op arena shooter, which is less of a remake and more of a spiritual reboot. It’s a risky change that brings the recipe up to date for today’s multiplayer scene, but also gets rid of a lot of what made Painkiller famous in the first place.
In contrast to its predecessor, which was about Daniel Garner’s sad journey through Purgatory to be with his wife again, this Painkiller is less about story and more about action. Now you play as one of four cursed fighters stuck in Limbo. Metatron, a celestial being, picked you to stop Azazel and his army of demons from coming to Earth.
Ink is a reverend who is half-demon, Sol is a disgraced cult leader, Roch is a witty British mercenary, and Void is a mystery figure with a glass dome for a head. Each of these new anti-heroes has a few small passive benefits, such as dealing more damage or gaining energy faster. They’re more archetypes than people, which is a shame. You can learn about their past by playing, but other than the odd sarcastic remark, they don’t have any personality.
It’s just a background for shooting demons in the face; there’s no big story or dramatic stakes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I miss the dark and strange tone of the 2004 original. This new Painkiller is happy just to be a mission-based demon slaughter game; there isn’t much of a story connecting the levels.
The plot is less important in this version of Purgatory; the shotgun rides shotgun.
Painkiller 2025 is based on nine main tasks, or “Raids,” that take place in three different biomes. Each Raid lasts about 20 minutes and has a number of arenas that get harder with more monsters, objectives, and loot. Players go back to a hub area between tasks to improve their weapons, add tarot cards, and change their loadouts before going back into battle.
The change to co-op is what makes this version of Painkiller unique. Up to three people can play at once in each task, but solo players don’t have to worry—AI companions fill in for missing teammates and are surprisingly good at what they do. They can bring you back to life if you fall down, distract enemies, and do fine in basic fighting. They can’t do objective-based jobs, though, which reminds you that this is very much a “bring friends or bust” event.
The speed is very fast, with quick moves, bunny hops, and aggressive attacks. It takes the best parts of DOOM Eternal’s kinetic combat, like always moving, managing resources through aggression, and quick, rewarding kills. This is a welcome return of the melee Painkiller weapon, which works like a demon blender to shred foes and heal yourself. There is also a stake gun, an SMG that fires lightning, and a rocket launcher. Each of these can be upgraded to have different fire modes.
Speed, blood, and heavy metal thunder make up the gunplay—at least for a while.
There’s no question that the fighting feels great at times. The controls are tight, aiming is very accurate, and guns are very powerful. It’s still very thrilling to blast a group of thralls apart with a shotgun or to watch lightning strike multiple enemies at once. Every area is designed to be in motion constantly, encouraging players to stay in the air and kill to stay alive.
However, the framework quickly starts to repeat itself. Almost every task is the same: you go into an arena, fight waves of enemies, finish a simple side mission (like filling a blood battery, carrying a soul cage, or standing in a zone), and then you move on to the next one. There isn’t much time to relax or look around. You’ll know exactly what’s going to happen by the middle of the campaign because there aren’t any shocks.
However, boss fights add some variety. With well-thought-out attack patterns and visually stunning areas, these huge demons test your ability to move and use weapons. Sadly, there aren’t enough of them to make up for how bland the game is generally.
The battles Paintkiller fights are fierce, but too many of them quickly turn to ash.
Painkiller has a light RPG progression system, like a lot of current shooters. When you finish Raids, you get cash and Ancient Souls, which you can use to buy new weapons or improve the ones you already have. You can also buy tarot cards, which change the game temporarily and give you more health, ammo, or damage for one task.
What’s the catch? Since tarot cards lose their value after every Raid, you have to keep buying new ones. Players have to choose between short-term power and long-term growth, since both cost the same amount of money. The game’s small rewards make this balancing act annoying, as you often have to repeat tasks for small rewards. It doesn’t feel like a satisfying loop; it feels like grinding just to grind.
There’s also Rogue Angel mode, a roguelike remix that turns known levels into random challenges so that the game can be played more than once. You start with basic gear, get bonuses in the middle of the run, and keep pushing yourself until you can’t go any further. It’s harder and more challenging than the campaign, but it uses so much of the same material that it feels more like a “bonus mode” than a real feature.
It’s not about salvation in Painkiller; it’s about doing the same thing over and over again.
Painkiller works great from a technical point of view. It stays at 60 frames per second on both Xbox Series X and PC, even during the busiest demon sieges. Particle effects, explosions, and weapon animations all look great, and the fighting feels lively.
The environments, which include industrial wastelands, haunted churches, and hellish fortresses, look good but aren’t very different from one another. They have a lot of detail, but after a few hours, they start to mix together. Anshar could have gone with surrealism or holy horror since this is Purgatory, but instead, he chooses a safe style called “gritty fantasy.” Even so, it’s hard not to enjoy the show when the screen fills with fire and debris.
The enemy forms do better, with their grotesque, muscular shapes and glowing weak spots. The bigger bosses, in particular, look like they’re worth the wait. Performance problems are rare, and the work that went into making it work better on all platforms is great.
It looks like Hell and feels like Heaven, but there’s no soul in the middle.
One of the best things about Painkiller is how the sounds are put together. The driving guitar riffs and pounding percussion in the heavy metal music bring the energy of the original game to life during every battle. The rocket launcher makes a loud boom, and the lightning gun’s electricity crackles. Each weapon sounds different and strong.
The speech, acting, and dialogue are not nearly as good, though. The heroes’ nonstop chitchat feels forced, and it often falls into the same tone problem as Marvel-style humor: it’s too smug and self-aware. Metatron’s divine comments, which are supposed to be scary, get annoying very quickly.
The sounds make you feel like you’re in a crazy place, but the words often take you back to reality. Still, the soundtrack and sound design really shine when you’re in the middle of a huge fight with demons, making each fight feel like a metal show in Hell.
Painkiller is pure, noisy joy when the riffs hit and the rockets fly.
Painkiller is a strange game because it is both a return and a new start. On the one hand, it has the kind of fast, hard gunplay that makes arena shooters so fun. But it takes away a lot of what made Painkiller great, like the creepy tone, the sense of adventure, and the gothic grandeur.
A short rush of it is fun, especially with friends. The guns and graphics look great, and the game runs perfectly. But the weak task structure, boring characters, and encounters that happen over and over again bring it down. It’s not a bad game at all, but it’s also not Painkiller.
This update is stuck in a weird hell of its own: it’s too polished to criticize and too empty to praise. It’s a nice-looking shooter that will keep fans of DOOM Eternal or Destiny’s Strike missions busy for a few nights, but it won’t stick with you like the first one did.
