The new *Painkiller* is out now on Steam, and it brings me no pleasure to say that it’s really not very good—although it does at least maintain the 20-year streak of *Painkiller* follow-ups being pale, flaccid imitations of the original.
*Painkiller*—intended as a reboot, I guess, hence coming to the table with the same unmodified name as the original—isn’t a bad game, strictly speaking. I’ve only played the now-vanished demo that was available during the Steam Next Fest, so my thoughts are based strictly on that. But based on my time with it, the new game seems like a reasonably competent, utterly unremarkable Doom-style co-op shooter.
And it is co-op, whether you like it or not: Even if you choose to play offline, you’ll be accompanied by bots who spout various bits of bad exposition about who they are and how they came to be there. In most situations, they will also quickly take care of all the combat for you if you let them. I tested this multiple times by simply standing in a corner after entering a new area. My bot bros struggled a bit with larger demons but otherwise cleaned house quickly, efficiently, and with no input from me. (Maybe I should’ve turned the difficulty up, but honestly, I was just trying to get through it.)
NuPainkiller feels smaller and more constrained than the original, although the basic structure is similar: enter an area, kill a bunch of enemies, move forward, rinse and repeat. The full game features new weapons, but the demo had only the stake gun, the electrodriver, and the famed whirling-blade *Painkiller*—all from the first game—and they all feel more or less like they did back then, although without the same sort of visceral “wow” factor. It’s been 20 years, after all.
Anyway, *Painkiller*—the new one—is fine, really, in the sense that it’s a video game that looks reasonably good, runs reasonably well, and did not do any harm to my PC. I can’t think of any real reason to recommend it, but neither would I actively try to steer anyone away from it. That said, $40 is quite the ask when you can pick up *Helldivers 2* or *Arc Raiders* (soon) for the same price.
That also seems to be more or less the reaction among players on Steam, where the new *Painkiller* sits with a “mixed” user rating, driven largely by the fact that it’s really not what it says on the box. As one Steam user put it in their review:
> “If you wanted something like the OG *Painkiller*—stay away. If you want a pretty generic and borderline hectic forced co-op shooter—try it.”
So, y’know. It’s fine.
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The big complaint—and it’s a fair one, really—is simply that it’s not *Painkiller*. The 2004 debut game from Polish studio People Can Fly is a mash-up of absolutely bonkers levels, enemies, weapons, wailing heavy metal “battle music,” and a story about a guy who loved his wife so much he accidentally killed her and now has to do penance by singlehandedly killing the shit out of Lucifer’s armies because God is, I dunno, busy or something.
It’s very weird and forcefully dumb, and yet it somehow came together in one of the most enduring cult-hit shooters of all time.
*Painkiller* is a game that left a mark, and no effort to match it in subsequent years has even come close.
But it got me thinking: Is my attachment to the legend of *Painkiller*, a game I loved in my (relative) youth, clouding my vision? I’ve played through the OG more than twice, but it’s been a long time since the last time—and we are all vulnerable to the gentle touch of nostalgia, after all.
Faced with this uncertainty, I embraced my responsibility as a Serious Journalist and reinstalled *Painkiller Black*, which includes the base game and 10-level *Battle Out of Hell* expansion.
And it gives me great pleasure indeed to say that my memories are not rose-tinted: This game is great.
*Painkiller Black* on a modern (well, Windows 11-capable) PC runs well and looks fantastic. It felt a bit sluggish at first—no dashing or dodging to be found here—until I remembered: bunny-hopping. *Painkiller* is in fact a very fast-moving game, but you have to put a little effort into it if you want to put distance between yourself and all the hordes of axe-wielding monks, beer-bellied bikers, opera-loving ninja, and other such weirdos the game will throw at you.
The guns boom, the bodies fly, the soundtrack rocks, and ragdolling doofs into a wall with a stake the size of a small tree never gets old.
The only issue I had was an inability to run the game in 4K. At 1080p, *Painkiller*—the old one—flowed like water on glass, but setting the resolution to 4K brought the whole thing to a near standstill. The menu was literally running at a seconds-per-frame pace, and getting it back to a functional lower resolution was a real test of patience.
It turns out that this is a known problem with the old game, and my pursuit of a fix led me to discover something very interesting: The *Painkiller RTX Remix* mod.
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*Painkiller RTX Remix* is transformative.
*Painkiller* looks great for a 20-year-old game, as I said, but the RTX Remix mod makes it look new. Lighting, reflections, shadows, enhanced enemies—it’s an across-the-board update that literally made me say “holy shit” out loud.
And I’m not alone in making that assessment: In August, Nvidia awarded *Painkiller RTX Remix* the “best overall” prize in its RTX Remix mod contest—a triumph that brings not just bragging rights but also a $20,000 prize for the dev team.
Now, a note of caution: *Painkiller RTX Remix* is a work in progress, and it was very janky during my time with it. It crashed when trying to load pre-mod saves, and sometimes when loading between levels, too.
But when it worked (and to be clear, I put no effort into trying to troubleshoot—I just wanted to squeeze in a few levels for testing)—holy shit. It was jaw-dropping, and the game’s performance seemed untouched. I have no idea about frame rates, but it was smooth as glass and that’s good enough for me.
If you had told me this was a Nightdive job, I’d have believed it.
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**In conclusion**, the new *Painkiller* delivers a competent but uninspiring co-op shooter experience that falls short of the original’s legacy. Meanwhile, revisiting the classic *Painkiller Black* with the *RTX Remix* mod offers a stunning revitalization of a cult classic well worth your time.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/the-new-painkiller-is-out-now-and-its-not-great-but-thats-okay-because-the-old-painkiller-still-is-and-theres-a-fantastic-new-mod-that-makes-it-look-like-a-brand-new-game/