[Review] Painkiller: Black Edition

Painkiller is a first-person shooter running on the Pain Engine, debut title of the Polish studio People Can Fly, it was published by DeamCatcher Interactive in April 2004. About a year later, it was re-released in its current Black Edition form which includes the Battle out of Hell Expansion.

I will focus on the original game and not the Unreal Engine 3 remake called Painkiller: Hell and Damnation pushed out the door by Nordic Games in 2013, with less content, recut story, and it removed levels to be resold as individual DLC. It's just awful, I recommend sticking to Black Edition.

/// Premise

After a deadly car crash with his wife, Daniel Garner finds himself stuck in purgatory, an angel named Samael offers him a deal, become Heaven's Hitman, kill Lucifer's generals before a full war escalates, and he will be granted Heaven ascension and meet his wife again. With the hell horde marching through Purgatory, Garner has no time to waste. He signs the pact.

/// Structure

The game is divided into five chapters, about five levels long, culminating in a boss encounter. Of them all, things start to pick up speed from chapter two onwards, peaking in its fourth. The approach to level design follows the traditional disjointed structure set in the '90s, with each map featuring an aesthetic different from the last. What Painkiller lacks in tonal consistency, however, it pays off in variety.

Castles, train stations, cathedrals, Industrial zones, middle eastern palaces, are some examples of places visited within Purgatory. Each stage also brings unique-looking enemies like Ninjas, monks, bikers, skeletons, knights, etc.

Painkiller fits within the niche sub-genre of "horde slaughter", no key hunts, no maze-like levels, just waves upon waves of enemies. This was around since the early Doom modding scene and later solidified as a new FPS branch by Serious Sam in 2001.

The latter is often used to quickly describe PK, but surface-level comparisons aside, they are very different in many aspects. Painkiller doesn't go for the same tone, scale, or spectacle the Serious Sam games are known for.

Painkiller focuses in a simpler "Hold down the trigger until everything is dead" loop, landing it closer to the arcade shooting of Serious Sam 2 if you really want to compare it to that franchise, but even then, it's still a bit of a stretch.

Pace

From the start Painkiller teaches you how stages will have a straightforward level design, focusing on combat scenarios first and foremost. Its flow is simple, follow the compass, touch the burning pentagram to trigger a combat encounter, kill waves of enemies, move to the next arena, repeat until the stage is over.

This would keep the pace going at a reasonably fast rate if it weren't for poorly telegraphed one-time gimmicks that stop you dead, as the game decides to step outside of the structure just taught to you without any warning.

To put it into context, to finish the third stage, you have to defeat an invincible grunt by shooting the boards on the ceiling and then bait him into the sunlight. This comes completely out of left field, as so far the game showed no hints of "sunlight weakness" being a thing, neither displayed an emphasis on keen observation of the environment, up until now you just shot things until they died.

You would think that maybe it was a tough-love tutorial for a mechanic that would be common from now on, but nope, the sunlight gimmick never shows up again for the rest of the game. These situations aren't frequent but they stick out like a sore thumb.

Another pacing issue Painkiller suffers in its combat loop. It doesn't present that strategic aspect of "weapon juggling", or rather, the game doesn't encourage you to do so. You don't quite feel the need to switch guns all that often and the issue lies primarily in the enemy design.

To put it simply, they lack mechanical variety. Enemies don't have a specific function that leads to on-the-fly decision making, instead, they just beeline towards you 90% of the time. Even the ones with gimmicks, their presence on the field isn't enough to push the player out of his comfort zone and force a playstyle switch as a Doom Archvile would.

Another factor is that instead of mixing and matching this already weak enemy pool into a more diverse, robust horde, it often just spawns waves of a single melee rush enemy, over and over again. These two flaws combined cause many scenarios to feel dull, repetitive, and unchallenging. It doesn't affect all encounters, but it noticeably impacts the game flow.

/// Gameplay

Ok now with that out of the way, in general, it's not as unplayable as it sounds the contrary, despite the poor pacing, Painkiller can still be quite an enjoyable shooter. Its simplicity is a double-edged sword, where it misses the mark on enemies, Painkiller shines as plain dumb fun, and that still has its worth.

Arenas are mostly flat areas with not much verticality, I would list it as a negative but in this case is beneficial, as Daniel movement speed is slow, but to compensate bunny hopping is made easier (and really fun) to perform, so having a clear space to just go wild with it feels good.

Gibbing waves of brain-dead AI with a few rockets is as cathartic as you expect, with the added bonus that Painkiller uses early Havoc Physics, making giblets and ragdolls extremely exaggerated but really entertaining to watch.

Weapons

Unlike enemies, the guns have a lot more personality, Daniel Garner is too "cool" to rock a generic military loadout, packing instead some creative, presumably hell forged designs that have a certified mid-2000's edge to them. Arguably the standout part of PK, and where most of the combat depth is found. In the base game, there are a total of five weapons with two different fire modes each and separated ammo pools. So a two-for-one deal, making it technically ten guns instead.

You have the titular Pain Killer, a claw-like blade, it is your default melee weapon, primary fire rotates the blades turning into a death fan. The secondary fire launches the claw, turning into a hook that pulls lighter enemies on contact, and leaves a laser tether behind that damages anything crossing it. By using the primary fire and following it up with the Hookshot it fires the spinning blade instead.

Shotgun Freezer, is a modified, automatic double-barrel shotgun. Primary mode fires old reliable shotgun shells while its secondary ejects a cold blast that will freeze, and subsequently shatter an enemy, causing an instakill. Again, with the early physics engine, hitting a weak enemy with a shotgun blast, only for the body to get flung several meters before splatting against a wall never gets old.

The Stakegun is functionally a massive crossbow with a grenade launcher attached to it. Does what you expect, high damage, pins enemies to walls, the best choice for long distances, hitting an arced shots makes it the most fun weapon in the game. Its secondary fires a grenade. If you can hit the grenade in the air with a stake it turns into a missile.

Rocket Launcher Chaingun. Yep, it's what says on the tin, rockets out of primary and rapid-fire bullets out its secondary, good for dealing with large groups of weak enemies. Its rockets invalidate the Stakegun missile trick, although is not as powerful.

Electrodriver, the final gun, it's an automatic shuriken launcher mixed with a Quake 3 style lightning gun. The stars are fired as projectiles at pinpoint accuracy at an ok fire rate, which works as a less powerful alternative to the minigun. Lightning secondary shreds enemies but eats through ammo fast. When both are combined it fires a charged shuriken that does a devastating area of effect electric damage.

While Painkiller wasn't the first game with secondary fire modes, this approach of two guns in one would later be used by developer Flying Wild Hog in 2011 in Hard Reset, then enhanced in Shadow Warrior 2013. With the latter having a clear impact on Doom 4 (2016) redesign process, it shows that even less revered games can still have contributions to the collective building blocks of game design.

Pickups and Demon Form

The arenas in Painkiller, as expected, are littered with ammo boxes armor pickups, and rarely power-ups. However, outside of a few exceptions, there are no conventional healing items scattered around levels, instead, you rely on the souls of your dead enemies to heal you (Pretty MetalTM).

After a kill, their body will vanish leaving a common green soul behind that restores one health point. Meaner demons leave red ones that refill six. This way Health is slowly regained and can be boosted beyond capacity.

Every 66 souls collected the player enters Demon Form, granting temporary invincibility, with weapons replaced by a strong physics push that usually insta-gibs enemies. It is a powerful tool that mixes things up a little, but given how souls behave, is not something you have much control over it.

Souls have a spawn delay and stay on the map for very little time, only collectible on direct contact. This creates an awkward situation where you dance around an enemy corpse for a while so you can grab the soul before it's gone. It is another issue that hampers the game's pace. It can be somewhat mitigated with the use of what the game calls Tarot Cards.

The Black Tarot

The Tarot system in Painkiller is like a series of modular upgrades. By spending gold coins found in stages the player can equip a set of five cards, creating a "build" of sorts.

The player can equip two Silver cards, they grant permanent upgrades such as Soul Catcher that increase the pickup range of souls or Vitality, boosting health capacity up to 150. Golden Cards can be manually triggered once per level, providing timed effects similar to powerups. These include what you would expect, increased movement speed, double damage, bullet time, etc. You can equip up to three of them.

But before you can spend that gold, you must unlock the cards themselves first. At the end of a stage a challenge is revealed, if you complete that map again within the parameters asked you earn a new Tarot Card. They can be easy or hard depending on the level, stuff like clearing it under a time limit, finding all secrets, not taking damage, using only one weapon, etc.

So in a way you are forced to play each map twice unless you checked online what the requirements were. Some of them are easy on purpose just so you have at least a few cards to play around with, but the powerful ones will be harder to get.

The Black Tarot brings some variety, but it's far from a complex system, once settled with an optimal/comfortable setup you will likely not bother switching it around ever again, as some cards are just superior or flat upgrades over others (Double Damage vs Quad Damage).

Difficulty

Painkiller features a confusing set of difficulty options, where some levels are not available depending on the chosen setting. To cut it short, the idea here is a convoluted mess that intended to incentivize replayability, the higher the difficulty, access to what are essentially secret levels are granted. There's a bit more to it like the removal of health pickup on very hard, but you get the idea.

To be honest, 2 of these 3 secret levels are pretty underwhelming and not worth the difficulty grind in my eyes, and that one good map you get access to by playing it on normal. If you want nothing to do with that, there is a helpful mod linked by the PC Gaming Wiki folk that removes these restrictions, giving access to the full game on any difficulty.

Story

To be frank, it is in the writing level of a porn movie, it's not really why you play the game, it tries way too hard to be taken seriously, while simultaneously throwing unintentionally comical scenarios like demon biker gangs with Tommy guns in Venice.

Battle out of Hell

Included with Black Edition, it is the first of many, I mean many, expansion packs for Painkiller, widely considered the best one. It adds a new big ten-level chapter, another two weapons, more Tarot cards, enemies, and new multiplayer modes (rip Game Spy). There's not much else to say. It's not a mandatory experience, featuring some good levels as well as some stinkers. As printed on the box it's an expansion, more Painkiller pills for those who crave it.

For the new weapons, as usual, they are the best part. A burst SMG combined with an ammo-hungry Flamethrower and a scoped Boltgun that fires cluster grenades (effectively a beefed-up version of the Stakegun).

/// Conclusion

The number one debate with Painkiller is whether or not it should be considered part of the retro shooter category. There are a million discussions mincing words in forums around the web, but in the end, it comes down to personal opinion.

If someone asks me if PK is a retro-shooter, my answer would be no, not really. But still, it shares more DNA with the old than with the new. It couldn't be farther removed from the modern style shooters that would dominate the genre for the following decade and a half.

Despite its issues, there's are reasons why Painkiller is still loved today. Its simple moment-to-moment gameplay remains fun. Bunny hopping at full speed while gibing hordes, pinning them to walls with the Stakegun is, unsurprisingly, super enjoyable still.

But there are also many reasons as to why it's not on anyone's best FPS list. Several small design decisions add up to result in a poor pace and unrefined mechanics. All things considered, for the time and as People Can Fly's first title, they did a pretty good job.

Sizing at 3.5GB it is one of those perfect games to keep on a hard drive to play on the go on a weak laptop. With how the Pain Engine is well optimized, it runs well on any old rig, and it goes well above 300 frames on modern machines.

Painkiller is an enjoyable dumb fun FPS that hasn't aged all that well. Give it a go if hurting for something to play. Otherwise, it's not a priority must-play title, especially if you are interested in the plethora of first-person shooters that cropped up these past few years.