Today, the gaming industry is full of forgotten series, whose names once sounded loud, but over time dissolved in the stream of new releases. One such legend was Painkiller - a hardcore shooter where everyone could try themselves as a hellish mercenary, and the battle with hordes of demons gave pure, almost arcade pleasure. After a successful start, the game received several sequels and a lot of meaningless re-releases, in which the very essence of the original was gradually lost.
By the 2010s, the franchise had completely faded into the shadows. The authors of the first part left the studio, founded their own company, and are now working on a much more ambitious project - the rogue-like shooter Witchfire. And the revival of Painkiller was undertaken by a completely different team, which previously released GameDec - an isometric role-playing game with an emphasis on dialogues. The result was predictable: the classic tried to return, but did so with other people's hands and with other people's ideas. Therefore, instead of reviving the series, people got a reconstruction based on modern trends.
Sterility Where There Should Be Dirt
From the first minutes, Painkiller pleases with dynamics. It's still an old-school shooter where battles are built on constant movement and aggression. There is no familiar sprint here - it is replaced by endless sliding. And this "gymnast set" is complemented by dashes and jumps off the walls. All these techniques allow you to feel the arenas literally with your body: they allow you not only to dodge attacks, but also to stun ordinary opponents. Such active gameplay is really invigorating. But it poorly ties in with the local format of passage.
The cooperative basis completely determines the game process. All missions are built for passing in a trio. You can start a single session, but bots will definitely be added to you. And the problem is that they play better than necessary: they shoot flawlessly, quickly clear waves of opponents, and do not allow you to feel danger. Because of this, the very meaning of team interaction is lost. Even on the maximum difficulty, the game does not test the player - it simply increases the number of enemies and the damage they deal, but does not make you think or change tactics.
Leveling up and preparing for missions add variability, but do not save from monotony. Before each raid, you can choose one of four heroes, 2 out of 6 guns, and two booster cards from a whole deck, acting within one sortie. Each weapon has two firing modes, and the iconic circular saw "Painkiller" is also used to replenish ammunition for firearms. After each battle, gold and souls are given out, which are necessary for leveling up and improving weapons. But even this progression eventually turns into routine: the rewards are predictable and are spent only on modifications and skins for characters.
Against this background, the "Rebellious Angel" mode looks like an attempt to breathe some fresh air into the game. It works on the Rogue-Like principle - players go through a series of random arenas, receiving temporary bonuses, modifiers, and consumables. The developers promised us a unique set of conditions and rewards for each playthrough. However, in practice there are almost no differences: enemies and tasks are repeated, and bonuses quickly cease to be felt as a reward. This is not a test, but simply a more compressed version of the main game. After a few runs, interest fades, because the game does not offer anything new, except for accelerated grinding.
As a result, Painkiller feels like an energetic, but superficial shooter. It deftly copies the rhythm and mechanics of modern action games, like Doom Eternal, but loses its brutal character. Only the names of the guns and the brand name remain from the original.
Caricature Where There Should Be Soul
The main loss of the new Painkiller is the atmosphere. Where once there was gloomy gothic, the cold light of candles, and the creak of stone cathedrals, now neon, self-irony, and cartoonish emotions of the heroes reign. The game seems to be afraid of its own seriousness: the characters joke, exchange remarks, and comment on what is happening with such enthusiasm, as if they were not in hell, but at a corporate team building. As a result, the feeling of despair and horror from the world after death, which was the heart of the original, disappears.
The artistic style is controversial. The developers tried to combine gothic aesthetics with elements of comics and modern "western" style. The result is a visual collage without a single artistic idea. The picture then strives for realistic gloom, then descends into caricature. Individual decorations and architecture are reminiscent of the old Painkiller, but these rare flashes quickly drown in the general tastelessness. Visually, the project is closer to Dragon Age: Veilguard or Avowed than to a harsh hell.
The same thing happens with the design of locations. Previously, Purgatory was a distinctive world with its own religious and historical references. In the new game of the series, only the names of the locations remain from this. And the levels themselves are built as if from the same models. They are distinguished only by the color of the filter and the shape of the corridors.
Another important part of Painkiller's design was the music. The original game sounded like a real concert in hell: heavy guitar riffs, explosions, and the moans of demons formed a single, living rhythm of battle. The soundtrack did not just accompany the action - it dictated the tempo, spurred, spurred, created that very "combat meditation" for which fans loved the game.
In the new version, there is no such drive. The soundtrack seems to be created according to an algorithm: monotonous rock compositions replace each other without any culmination, and are lost in the noise of shots. At first you don't notice it at all, and then it starts to annoy with its repetitiveness. Each mission is accompanied by a variation of the same riff, and by the middle of the campaign, you get the feeling that the sound is simply broken.
The only thing that works stably is the technical side. Unreal Engine 4 provides smooth operation and minimal drawdowns even on medium systems. However, stability does not replace inspiration. The picture is clear, but sterile: as if the game was assembled according to a textbook, forgetting to add soul.
Diagnosis
The biggest problem with the new Painkiller is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. The developers tried to combine the traditions of the old school with the cooperative trends of modernity, but in the end they did not cope with either one or the other. Only the shell remains from the classic Painkiller: a familiar name, a couple of iconic guns, and rare visual references. Everything else is borrowing.
The gameplay is based on the model of modern arena shooters: waves of enemies, cooperative clearing, leveling scales, and a system of in-game currencies. But the original had a completely different core - a single confrontation with chaos and a sense of constant threat, when the player stood alone against all. In the new version, this feeling has disappeared. There is no fear here, no internal tension, no strange, almost religious melancholy that made the old game stand out.
Even the structure of the campaign reflects this loss of identity. Instead of a series of hellish worlds with a unique atmosphere - nine short missions, made according to one template: corridors with checkpoints and arenas with demons. Everything has become more straightforward and boring.
As a result, Painkiller no longer feels like part of its own legend. This is not a continuation or a rethinking, but a project made on the bones of someone else's greatness. A game that speaks the language of a modern shooter, but does not realize that it will not be interesting for a young audience, and for veterans of the series it is perceived as an insult.