Painkiller Preview - A Classic FPS Back From Purgatory

Outside of Doom: The Dark Ages, it has been a fairly sparse year as far as first-person shooters go, but an upcoming title hopes to change that by rebooting yet another classic series. Painkiller is back from the dead, and this time you'll want to take a few friends along for the ride. 

That's right; differing from the original Painkiller from 2004, this is a cooperative take on the franchise, which is a bold new direction for the series. With customizable weapon configurations, you'll fight your way through various levels of Purgatory while contending with demonic hordes of foes.

Painkiller, Back From the Dead

The basic gist of Painkiller's gameplay is that it's a cooperative shooter supporting up to three players. You and a group of friends tackle linear, but "dynamic" levels with objectives along the way, eventually leading to an ending sequence that might put you against hordes of enemies or even a fearsome boss. 

Our preview for Painkiller comprises two levels as well as access to every weapon and character. First things first, though, a tutorial/prologue session. This tutorial immediately establishes a tone for Painkiller. One could mistake Painkiller as a Doom game at first glance, but it sets itself apart by offering comedic quips and humorous writing.

Painkiller's lighthearted tone and humorous dialogue clash with its grimdark, Gothic setting of Purgatory, but it's a tone I don't mind at all. Silly dialogue from characters like angel Metatron helps set it apart from other FPS titles with a similar aesthetic. I even found myself chuckling at a few lines of dialogue, and nothing was enough for me to roll my eyes. 

Purgatory's Arsenal 

The tutorial goes over the basic elements of Painkiller, as any good intro sequence should. Making a return is the eponymous Painkiller weapon, this sort of handheld propeller from Hell. It slices and dices through groups of weak enemies like a hot knife through butter.

Eventually, we're granted two starting weapons: One is the Stakegun, which, true to its name, shoots out giant stakes. The other is the Electrodriver, which rapidly shoots out shurikens and slices through hordes of enemies with ease. At the end of the tutorial, these are your only two weapons players have access to, but you'll unlock more as you complete levels and purchase them. 

Weapons are a huge emphasis here, as they should be -- it's an FPS, after all. With only six weapons at our disposal, it's slim pickings. We can only equip two weapons each run, too. There's no way to change your loadout mid-level, which is a shame since gameplay can start to feel repetitive.

Despite some repetition in the gunplay, it does feel satisfying to mow through hordes of smaller enemies and, even with the larger and more powerful foes, your weapons seem to pack a punch. I wish gore was a bit more visible just to see the impact of your weapons, but shotgunning a group of zombies in the face is never boring.

There's also weapon progression, so as you play, you can upgrade and tweak the way your guns behave after each run. Guns have their own skill tree, essentially, and choosing a path will further upgrade a gun's functionality and make it more powerful.

Guns, Tarot Cards, and You

These upgrades have an effect on your primary fire's behavior, but each gun also comes with a secondary fire, of which there are several to choose from. The shotgun, for instance, can repulse enemies with kinetic force and send them flying off cliffs. Another choice for the secondary is the Freezer attachment, which freezes enemies in a wide area. 

Then come core fire upgrades, so you can have it so that the shotgun shoots slugs, or, for another choice, have it shoot in a wider radius. Each weapon has both these core upgrades and enhancements to secondary fire, so variation is actually quite large. They also come with visual upgrades, which is a neat touch.

These upgrades do come pretty fast, so I worry about how exciting gunplay will feel in the long run, especially when you're stuck with your loadout between each run. Nonetheless, experimenting with different weapon builds is what drove me to continue playing.

Another part of your toolkit is tarot cards, which sound exciting on paper, but didn't do much to impress me. You can spend in-game money to roll for new tarot cards to add you your deck, and you can equip two of these. Some of these add base stat increases like more health or damage, while others seem to be very situational.

For instance, one card, Frost Fall, has the effect "Landing from height freezes nearby enemies." Another, called Profane Blessing, grants your weapon 30 percent more damage. Some cards are way more useful than others, as you can see, usually the more powerful ones are also the most mundane. 

Tearing Through the Grounds of Purgatory

Painkiller touts dynamic levels, so in theory, no run is the same. The two levels available in the demo were, by and large, 99 percent the same. The same exact layout, just with some treasure chests or gold hidden in different areas. I really wish there were more variance to Painkiller's levels, because I have a feeling this might get old real quick. 

Levels are pretty fast, after all, and take around 30 minutes to complete. During this half hour, you'll be running through the level, slaughtering a bunch of weaker enemies, and taking on the occasional powerful foe.

Levels typically have a few objectives you'll need to complete along the way. These instances take place within some well-crafted combat arenas. These arenas take advantage of Painkiller's run-and-gun. The developer knows how to craft an exciting environment to rip and tear through, I'll give them that. 

Admittedly, levels are well-made, but feel old upon repetition. I'm not sure if Painkiller is meant to be played as a one-and-done sort of deal, but the way the gameplay systems are designed leads me to believe multiple runs to upgrade your weapons is the way to go.

If that's the case, I hope Anshar Studios has more than a handful of levels for us to explore, otherwise, I can see Painkiller's online population dropping off quite quickly after finishing their initial run through the campaign. As a game that requires a healthy player base to survive, I'm a bit worried based on what I've played.

You can play with bots, but that's not quite the same experience as playing with humans. Bots are competent enough, but did have trouble following my order to stand on a certain switch or target specific enemies. I also had one instance where a bot died on a spike trap, so another bot went over to try to revive it. They both got stuck and died until their lives ran out.

Bots are even more of a nuisance when it comes to completing one certain objective. Your progress will halt when you reach certain checkpoints in the map, so you might have to survive a few hordes of enemies, and then you can move on. Others require you to fill tanks of blood by killing enemies in their proximity, which is simply not fun.

You, as the player, can carry these blood tanks, while the bots can't. Stopping your shooting to reposition these tanks with janky physics is a nuisance, and for some reason, there are quite a few of these objectives within the maps. I'm sure it's less painful to play with actual players, at least. 

But still, Painkiller desperately needs more variety in the different types of tasks players. Most of the gameplay comprises surviving said hordes of enemies, or filling these blood tanks. That's all. Give us more objectives to do, and make it dynamic. Things get stale pretty fast otherwise.

Painkiller Preview | Final Thoughts

There is merit to cooperative titles with hordes of enemies. Look at the success of games like Left 4 Dead and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. The difference, though, is that levels are longer and more grander in scope, and enemies are more diverse and complex. 

There is also elements of unpredictability in those types of games, which Painkiller lacks. The core gameplay of Painkiller is solid, and levels are decent enough the first time around, but consecutive runs? I'm not so sure.

I desperately wish for Painkiller's success. Levels are richly detailed. Each weapon has more than a few unique quirks about them. Combat areas are vertical, visceral, and well-crafted. But to truly garner attention, I hope for a greater degree of randomization between each run, as well as a stronger progression system. Time will tell when it launches this October. 

Painkiller was previewed on PC using a copy provided by the publisher over the course of 4 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of preview.