Ask any first-person shooter fan out there about their opinion on the 2004 game Painkiller, and the utter vast majority of them will say they’re a fan. It featured great visuals for the time, as well as an interesting premise, a story worth caring about, a lengthy campaign, and an ultraviolent gameplay loop that hasn’t aged a single day since its release. It was the game that put its development team, People Can Fly, on the map, which would then go on to develop Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment. After a handful of expansions released up until 2012, the franchise had remained dormant… up until now. The announcement of a brand new Painkiller piqued my interest, made me hopeful for yet another loud shooter for me to enjoy, but I can’t help but feel disappointed with the end result.

Walk through level, reach small arena, kill many enemies, proceed to next area, repeat.

If you’ve started reading this review by checking its score, you might be thinking I’m insane. Feeling massively disappointed about a game you gave a 7.0 to? Are you one of those hyperdramatic bums on the internet who considers anything below an 8.0 a disaster? Nope, it’s not that. The odd thing about playing this new Painkiller is that, technically-speaking, it is a good game. But is it a good Painkiller? Does it have anything to do with the franchise? Absolutely not.

The original Painkiller was a straight-to-the-point shooter with a lengthy single player campaign, and, granted, a fantastic online multiplayer setting, with one of the best and most entertaining deathmatch modes from the 2000s era of PC gaming, one which even managed to become one of the earliest big e-sports back in the day. The 2025 Painkiller is neither. It’s a co-op raid shooter just vaguely tied to the original game, starring a group of four individuals stuck in Purgatory, fighting a war against invading Hellspawn, all whilst being guided by a monstrously unfunny voice from above.

There aren’t that many weapons, but they all have a secondary function.

In this co-op shooter, you start off by picking a level from a hub world, selecting your playable character (out of a possible four), planning your loadout, and venturing into admittedly gorgeous, but small levels featuring a series of simple objectives to complete before you’re transported back to the hub. Cash in your rewards, buy new weapons, and do everything all over again. You are going to see everything this new Painkiller has to offer in just a few sessions, in about three-ish hours.

I’ll reiterate: the gameplay is actually pretty good. The movement is fluid, the button responsiveness is sound, and the action is visceral. Enemies will infest the screen at any given point, as if you were playing Left 4 Dead or Dead Rising. In this regard, this game is impressive, as the performance is always smooth, whilst offering some impressive vistas whenever you have time to actually pay attention to what’s happening onscreen that doesn’t involve killing monsters. But the problem is that everything feels very generic and derivative. It’s a game you’ve played before.

I really didn’t like the limited and predetermined loadout; you can’t even collect new weapons inside a level, for instance. Some of them don’t even pack that much of a punch. The main issue, however, is that this is just how every other co-op shooter works. With the exception of some occasional impressive imagery, Painkiller looks, feels and plays just like any other co-op or raid shooter in the market, just with the difference that it features a more arcadey, “boomer-esque” control scheme. But that doesn’t make it stand out.

The metal soundtrack is decent, but the voice acting is the definition of “cringe”.

It’s impossible to not to feel disappointed by how 2025’s Painkiller ended up being, even if it’s, technically-speaking, a well-polished and competent shooter. I have no idea why is the publisher even calling it “Painkiller” to begin with: trying to associate it with a vastly different shooter will pretty much disappoint the entirety of the original game’s fanbase. It could have easily been marketed as a brand new IP set in Purgatory; it would have still been generic, the typical game to be released on Gamepass and enjoyed for a month, but it wouldn’t have felt like an attempt to cash in on a dormant franchise’s nostalgic appeal despite having nothing to do with it.

Painkiller is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Painkiller was provided by the publisher.