{"id":1367563,"date":"2025-10-23T13:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/SfeCELP8rKNjDbMQ3KrSDV"},"modified":"2025-10-23T13:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:14:14","slug":"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","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/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\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Painkiller is out now and it’s not great, but that’s okay because the old Painkiller still is and there’s a fantastic new mod that makes it look like a brand-new game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The new Painkiller is out now on Steam<\/a>, and it brings me no pleasure to say that it’s really not very good\u2014although it does at least maintain the 20-year streak of Painkiller follow-ups being pale, flaccid imitations of the original.<\/p>\n

Painkiller\u2014intended as a reboot, I guess, hence coming to the table with the same unmodified name as the original\u2014isn’t a bad game, strictly speaking. I’ve only played the now-vanished demo that was available during the Steam Next Fest and 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.<\/p>\n

And it is co-op, whether you like it or not: Even if you choose to play offline, you’ll be in the company of bots who spout various bits of bad exposition about who they are and how they came to be there, and in most situations 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.)<\/p>\n

NuPainkiller feels smaller and more constrained than the original, although the basic structure is similar: Enter an area, kill a bunch of guys, 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\u2014it’s been 20 years, after all.<\/p>\n

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