Painkiller: Black Edition Reviews

Boomer shooter galore

most underrated FPS ever

Very cool FPS, though not flawless.

absolutely phenominal game. so much fun. i love it

[h1] A nostalgic take from someone who played it 15+ years ago [/h1] [h2] Short intro [/h2] Imagine Doom but you're fighting demons. Wait, that’s exactly what Painkiller is. map and rooms packed with hordes of enemies, constant movement. You get a shotgun, chain gun, rocket launcher, stake gun, lightning shurikens classic Doom style weapons with alt‑fires that should be cool, but often feel inconsistent and buggy. Movement is fast perma bunny hop and half‑life style strafe feels amazing. Game is more about crowd clearing with explosive physics and ragdoll gore everywhere. [h2] Core Mechanics & Design [/h2] Seems simple, collect souls off dead enemies: gives tiny health and after collecting 66 souls you can morph you into an 1 shot demon, the problem here is they despawn fast and often vanish before you can pick them up making it pointless to bother halfway through massive fights. Weapons feel niche: you can finish the game with somewhat melee alone. Alt fire modes are bad and often fail due to collisions issues, even enemies stay solid until despawn. [h2] Bugs [/h2] Complete crashes happen if you go too fast or after defeating an enemy. Navigation can freeze mid-level, and your compass sometimes points the wrong direction, leaving you stuck, enemies can also get stuck somewhere in the terrain. Almost no support for bigger monitors, can't change volume mid game. [h2] Level & Map Design [/h2] Maps are massive, atmospheric, and vary from gothic cathedrals to metal-infused Venice, prison and opera house arenas. It takes about 7-15min to clear 1 level total of 24 levels out of 6 chapters. The layout is straightforward clear rooms of enemies before progressing but it lacks puzzle mechanics. Secret areas exist and challenges exist if you wanna complete them, they reward a taro card which will help enhance your gameplay but not that game changing. [h2] Sound & Music [/h2] The background music is heavy metal, reminds of Serious Sam. Weapon sounds are punchy and satisfying when they land. But Still the music is barely noticeable amid all the chaos. [b] Rating: 7/10 [/b] It's more of a nostalgic rating but it still somewhat holds up after 20+ years

This game is trash. Before people think I'm too harsh on this game because of its age and time it was developed in (2004), I'm judging it by the standards of its era which produced games like Half Life 2, one of the greatest FPS's of all time. What is really wrong with it is... the boss fights. They were so overly complicated and involved ridiculous puzzles where the boss became invincible requiring certain actions/triggers that were far from near obvious. They were not challenging nor fun, they were just plain annoying, time wasting and stupid. I ended up watching Youtube walkthroughs to find out how to beat them because I don't have time to spend hours stuffing around in each boss fight just to figure out a puzzle to beat each boss. Some of the levels were overly complex like this too. What's worse is that the game twice crashed near the ends of two different long boss fights, forcing me to start over, almost as if it was deliberate to screw me over. Here's an example, in the level "Pentagon" in the Battle Out Of Hell expansion, I had to fight a giant mechanical spider. I fought it down to half health and it went into an invincible electric phase so I then had to shoot it with some artillery guns in each corner of the room to deactivate its electric phase. I did that in the first attempt and it worked and I was about to the finish it off but then the game decided to crash to desktop. Very infuriating! I attempted again multiple times and now the artillery guns are no longer disabling the electric phase after firing each of them many times directly at the boss, rendering it impossible to kill. So I just gave up and quit. Absolute garbage game. I have no time nor respect for games/bosses that don't respect my time. And I certainly have no respect nor sympathy for games and their developers which are poorly built and never fixed. If this fully updated game still has crashes in 2025, I can't imagine how bad it must have been when it first released in 2004. Although I bought this game during at a bargain during a sale, it's still a much regrettable waste of my money and time.

Installed this game because of the RTX Remix ... [h1]TL DR:[/h1] Developers throw all their ideas into this game without testing, this can be seen in the random selection of levels, the luck-based nature of encounters where every battle feels like a speedrunning attempt, the many areas where you can get softlocked or stuck, the lack of collision checking for explosions so you can get hurt from behind walls and obstacles, and the glitchy movement where they tried to combine the 'realistic' Havok physics system with their crude in-house movement mechanics so you can die randomly from the physics props. Player movement physics is FPS-dependent, some of the secret areas which require physics glitches to reach are basically impossible to get if your FPS is too low [h2]The Pros[/h2]: The vibes ... Playing through the game in its original form, it has a distinctive art style and isn't too bad looking for a 20 year old game(And obviously the RTX remix brings it up to modern standards). The level design is basically a generic collection of themes, functionally basic arenas for combat. The 'Battle Out Of Hell' DLC levels bring more stylistic flair and new ideas, at least in terms of presentation. If you installed Creative Alchemy Universal to enable the built in EAX3 or DirectSound 3D 'hardware' support, you will find that the sound design is also quite atmospheric and it is a genuinely surprising plus point for the game, the over-the-top sound effects make you feel like you are in a theme park. (tip: Do not use any of the other 3rd party sound options offered by the game, they glitch out on modern systems) The physics ... Physics simulations were a big thing in the early 2000's games, and this game shows it off gratuitously, the ragdoll physics is a satisfying reward for killing an enemy efficiently (initially a well placed shotgun blast, but later with rapid fire weapons). But if you do gib the enemies, the particle effects do a good job of conveying the gore. Most of the levels are static, but are sprinkled with destructible props to add some flair, and the explosive objects also make the gameplay more interesting. There are 2 boss arenas, however, which are set in heavily destructible set pieces, the bosses themselves are relatively straightforward but you have to navigate past all the physics objects to avoid their attacks which complicates matters and makes every playthrough unique. The game has a nice presentation which makes you want to keep playing , you get to toy around with the physics and practice your aim at the same time. [h2]The cons[/h2]: The movement mechanics ... If you have played any of the big name FPS games, you will find the movement in this game primitive and jarring. Whereas the physics props and ragdolls move in a realistic and convincing way, your player character is programmed to move linearly in whichever direction you are facing, as in the game literally moves your character in that direction by a fixed amount every tick, there is no momentum , no concept of acceleration or deceleration at all. As a result, you can change direction in mid air, and some quirky inaccuracy causes to you gain a bit more height when you do so while in contact with level geometry. There is a speed boost which accumulates from jumping, but its a simple scalar multiplier to the amount of movement the game applies every tick... So you can 'bunny hop' to move around faster but it is tedious, and you can try to gain height or speed by jumping on physics objects but it is unpredictable It feels very stiff and artificial, there is very limited scope for movement tech... It is perfectly serviceable for combat and completing the levels, but it really shows when trying to get the secret items... The game developers clearly want to test you on your 'knowledge' of their movement mechanics, the early levels have secrets which are accessed with novel and clever physics tricks, but it quickly devolves into un-intuitive movement glitches and arbitrary platforming challenges, with no sense of consistency with the placement of the secrets and the invisible walls (it is as if the levels were designed by amateurs). Unfortunately, those same movement mechanics are so untested in this game that there is the real possibility trapping you in some level geometry when you are searching for secrets, requiring you to reload the game. Why they chose to stick with such a frustrating and archaic feeling movement system is beyond me. Gameplay progression ... Specifically, the gameplay modifiers that you can choose when you start the level, i.e. the 'Black Tarot' cards . These modifiers do basic things like increase damage, slow down time, etc etc, and are rewarded for completing the level under certain conditions, but some of these conditions in turn are extremely improbable without applying at least some of the previously awarded modifiers, and I am convinced that some of the boss battles are almost unwinnable without the correct combination of these 'Black Tarot' cards. When the game incentivizes you to use these modifiers along this specific path, it feels more restricting than rewarding. Not to mention, there is the element of trial and error, which can be frustrating if you had to restart the level to try out different card combinations. Some of the encounters also seem obviously untested, the developers clearly prioritized implementing their ideas at all costs over delivering a quality product, many of the experiences feel unfinished at best and broken at worst, requiring more luck than skill to pass, this is especially true of some of the set pieces in the 'Battle Out Of Hell' expansion pack, which is unforgivable given that its a DLC and they should have had time to improve by then

[b] Genre [/b]: 3D Action FPS, Singleplayer Focused, Dark Fantasy Style [b] Overall Score [/b]:⭐⭐⭐⭐💫❌/ 6 [b] Story/Writing [/b]:⭐⭐❌❌❌❌/ 6 [b] Controls/Combat/Movement [/b](with Keyboard+Mouse) :⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐❌/ 6 [b] Exploration [/b]:⭐⭐⭐⭐💫❌/ 6 [b] Music/Sound [/b]:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/ 6 [b] Design/Graphics [/b]:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐❌/ 6 [b] Duration [/b]: 12h[b] ++ [/b](On Insomnia/Standard Difficulty) [b] Difficulty [/b]: Beginner - Veteran [b] Extra Tip 1 [/b]: Turn Off 'Warp Effects' under 'Options -> Video -> Advanced' (The game might freeze or crash more often otherwise) [b] Extra Tip 2 [/b]: Avoid the last Level/Boss 'Hell' it's pretty bad/boring [b] My Playthrough [/b]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0aXA8ZdVpOgAVqbWryRuOjMyDsKvJKa_

Hell has many torments. For me, it’s being locked in another identical cathedral corridor for the 73rd time with a stake gun and no map.

For me, Painkiller: Black Edition stands as the true spiritual successor to Doom. This is a quintessential "boomer shooter" that throws complex strategies, intricate level verticality, and fancy movement mechanics like dashes and wall jumps out the window. Instead, you'll find yourself mindlessly strafing, shooting, and pushing forward to the next chaotic encounter. The enemy AI is refreshingly simple: charge the player, occasionally fire, and repeat. And honestly? I absolutely adore it. Beyond the visceral gameplay, the original soundtrack is an absolute banger. I'm genuinely baffled as to how it didn't sweep every award in its category. For some inexplicable reason, the default audio settings seem to bury its brilliance, so here's my crucial recommendation: crank that volume to the max! I've even got it blasting in my car. While Mick Gordon rightly gets immense credit for his work on Doom, for my money, Adam Skorupa and Marcin Czartyński are the real MVPs when it comes to crafting a game-defining score. If you crave a pure, unadulterated dose of old-school, no-frills shooting action, Painkiller: Black Edition delivers in spades. It's a relentless, head-banging good time that reminds you just how satisfying simple chaos can be.