3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Painkiller is a rough-around-the-edges FPS that feels like the lovechild of Doom and Left 4 Dead
Schlocky co-operative FPS action is alive in full force in Painkiller, which feels like a rush to play despite not being the most polished.
If you're seeking a Doom-like FPS experience you can play with friends, Painkiller is shaping up to be a hell of a good time for players who like mindlessly shooting demons together.
Painkiller is the type of co-operative FPS where you can look at one screenshot or brief gameplay segment and know instantly what vibes it's going for. It doesn't want to be big, or even particularly clever – let alone genre-pushing. What it does want to be, however, is bloody fun (literally). It offers you and up to two other friends the chance to fight your way through Purgatory itself using interesting weapons, character classes, and randomised Tarot Card power-ups.
Having now played through the prologue and two levels, I feel confident in saying it achieves its goal – it's a real blast. It could even turn out to be especially great providing developer, Anshar Studios, dedicates the time to balance its odd difficulty spikes better and smooth out its slight yet noticeable technical problems.
Taking on the role of one of four determined demon hunters, and gunning down legions of hell's forces feels quickly cathartic in Painkiller. Helping this sense of instant gratification hit harder is no doubt the game's decision not to start you off with a simple pistol or machine gun, but rather a litany of different weapon types that work brilliantly to decimate foes.
Chief among them is the titular Painkiller, being a primarily melee-driven device with a rotary fan attached on the end that will see enemies spew out with ammunition whenever resources are low. There's always a risk using it, though, since it forces you to get in close, but it does well to see blood spill over the screen.
Far more effective at range are the Stakegun and Electrodriver, which both tout functions that are just as badass as these names suggest. The Stakegun serves as your shotgun of sorts although with a more precise shot, capable of being upgraded so that each stake rapidly twirls to drill into demons and do far more damage.
The Electrodriver, meanwhile, functions as your starting assault rifle, yet doubles up as a way to shock larger enemies with a health bar using a long burst of lightning. Cast enough of it and you'll be able to stun the foe, opening them up for an instant kill attack.
If you can't tell already Painkiller is the type of hell-based FPS not wanting to take itself too seriously, encouraging players to get in, get killing, and have fun while doing it. The weapons certainly play an important factor to accomplishing this, but so too does just how great it feels to move through its underworld stages.
This is where Painkiller most definitely takes a page out of the Doom rulebook, letting you slip and slide around, and latch onto grapple points that in theory makes getting overwhelmed by the hordes less of a possibility. When this gameplay loop works, it really works, allowing Painkiller to punch well above its weight.
House of pain
I say this since nothing that Painkiller does is particularly new per se, but it excels in pooling together familiar systems and mechanics from elsewhere, grinding it up in such a way that it made me remember, 'oh yes, that's right. FPS games are meant to be fun and hard-to-put-down'. One aspect somewhat original to Painkiller is the Tarot Card system, whereby earning enough gold and advancing far enough into levels will let you equip up to two unique, gameplay-altering perks. From doubling the amount of gold received upon completing a raid to upping your damage output, I can see how Tarot Cards should help make undertaking repeat runs interesting.
The one thing harming my enjoyment of Painkiller right now is its persistent lack of polish. Sure, sliding through a graveyard to mash through a giant Taurus enemy looks and feels good in the moment. Not so much when you latch onto a grappling hook and sling yourself across a stage only to end up caught in the level's geometry.
It also feels a tad unbalanced in terms of difficulty too, with certain portions of both the Defiled Quarry and Cathedral Bridge stages I played both having bottleneck portions where enemies have a habit to swarm, attack, and never let up. Also not helping is how health bottles aren't exactly easy to find.
I'm hoping that these issues are more a case of me playing both sections with two bots as opposed to real-life partners, as intended. There are four difficulty levels to pick from prior to set up a raid, but even then, Azazel's forces proved to be particularly cruel – even on the lowest setting. Luckily, this did nothing to dissuade me from jumping back into to both stages I had access to multiple times, especially since I wanted to squeeze out as many upgrade unlocks for my Stakegun and Electrodriver as I could, coupled with a good degree of Tarot Card experimentation.
From the few hours I played, Painkiller is proving to be not so much of a pain, and more of the kind of old-school co-op FPS action that makes me nostalgic for the days of 2016's Doom and even Left 4 Dead before that. Many games of this ilk have tried and failed to fill this slot, but Painkiller proves tough enough to put down I'm hoping it'll have the juice to stick around.
3D Realms, after all, is the type of publisher that has a penchant for shepherding this exact style of game, so providing the few areas of unpolish are resolved prior to Painkiller's launch this October 9, 2025, there's every reason to be excited about the prospect of endless FPS slaughter with friends.
