Painkiller: Black Edition

Serious Sam but without any strategic puzzle fights, just blast your way to victory. Fun game with new enemy types almost every level, although they tend to all mostly behave similarly.

Serious Sam 2 but somehow even more boring. Seriously as much as I hate trying to judge other people for liking games this pushes it too far, anyone trying to claim this is one of the GOATs is just wrong. Like I feel comfortable saying they're objectively wrong.

A simple shooter with kickass music. A bit janky but overall pretty fun mindless fps.

I love this game! This game is the origin of my nickname.

Painkiller is a blast to play, especially on the hardest difficulty because it's wickedly punishing and really forces you to put an effort in to survive. Both this and Hell and Damnation are essentially the same game, but Black edition has more levels and is a tad harder while Hell and Damnation has much better graphics. The story is kind of hilarious, as it's about a regular man who dies in a car accident and for no reason is called upon to kill four guardians of hell, of which are basically large giant golem-type creatures.

The fun in these games is the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you, combined with the fact that you will often be locked into a small arena and forced to scramble to survive. It is similar to Serious Sam, but perhaps less chaotic and a bit more strategic since you can guide the enemies to certain places and use specific weapons to obliterate them. My only real complaint with this game is that the levels just feel random. One level you're at a carnival and the next you're fighting in a world war 2 setting. I would've liked a little more consistency to keep the game more in line with the story, but beyond that I recommend playing this game and Hell and Damnation, though maybe not immediately because you will be playing some similar content twice.

It's not the worst game in the world, but it's very boring if you've played an fps before. If you've never played a video game or had a garbage PC in the early 2000's then you probably love this game. It's just so basic and boring I can't find any redeeming qualities for the entirety of this game franchise. Painkiller is a shitty version of Serious Sam.

i love this game

Classic fun. I love killing demons. Old school game logic too. Had fun scaling the levels.

Clasic si amu am CD-ul dar o intrebare daca am tras din greseala intr-o statuie a fecioarei Maria si intr-un geam de biserica ajung in iad?

Game worked just fine until Chapter 5 Level 1. Now the game wont stop freezing completely making me have to hard reset my pc.

Using the Stake gun and the Shotgun with the freeze alt-fire is a 10/10 combo.
The levels are super varied and have a really cool atmosphere

Never gets old!

6/10

Душевная игра, вызывает чувство ностальгии по 2000

Classic. Still one of the best FPS games ever made.

The game still plays great, but the last boss, Alister King, in BOOH, is absolutely broken, which is sad. Soundtrack is awesome.

Best old school ever so good, the rush is the best in hardest cannot wait for the remake i was waiting years and years <3

My pain was indeed killed. Would kill again. 6/66

If you can get it runnig with no crashes and bugs (it took me a while) its peak 2000s gaming for sure. Fun, straight forward no deep story BS. Enjoy!

I'm surprised that this game isn't talked about more. Playing Painkiller for the first time in 2025, I noticed how much of its DNA is in the new wave of fast-paced shooters: the level structure and challenge system for power-ups came back in Doom 2016, the simplified bunny-hopping for speed came back in Dusk, the system for collecting enemy souls to activate a special mode where you're overpowered came back in Amid Evil...

This is a super fun game that has aged remarkably well. Coming out in 2004 it may have been overshadowed at the time by Half-Life 2, when people started becoming more interested in "mature" fps with integrated story-telling, but Painkiller represents an equally valid alternate path toward optimizing fast-paced 3D fps action the PVE games didn't pick up on until over 10 years later.

Awesome find; I'm excited to play all of the DLC. Hopefully the new installment coming later this year can maintain the irreverant and arcadey spirit of the original.

Still a classic, still very much worth it.

Incredibly boring.
Maybe this garbage tries to justify its miseralbe existence with its blasphemy. But that does not make it any better.

yea

It crashes constantly, the window can't be minimized without turning to mush, and it's just another relic of the past that nobody has incentive to keep up to date with modern operating systems and hardware.

This is a wonderful game otherwise, but has become increasingly difficult to play over the years due to the same problems that plague old games and software -- no incentive to keep up with the times, not enough players to even care about it. Pretty soon all of the old gems will be gone, so we'd better get used to it.

you boot up the game and immediately start decimating an entire skeleton warrior army in a gothic cemetery in the first 5 minutes 10/10

Classic Shooter

Crack

Back in my day we made boomer shooters unironically.

- Bad controls
- Boring bosses
- Very unstable, crashes often
- difficulty is as inconsistent as the mechanics of gameplay

In this day and age there is zero reason to play this, there are many much better classics AND many much better new indie retro shooters

good

It's a classic boomer shooter just like doom. And for it's age it still plays and looks just fine. Personally I didn't encounter any major bugs or glitches. Plenty of gun and enemy variety, the maps also are all very different. I would recommend it you can look past it's age and or are into these classic shooters.

Old school cool

Game keeps crashing when trying to load any save from chapter 3 first episode.
Fixing files, reinstalling game, and deleting all saves does not help.
Its looks like chapter 3 is bugged, and you cant really die or load back your save.
I will finish chapter 3 and I will see if next chapter will crash the game.
I doubt I can fix this somehow, as some people can play this game without any issues, and in other hand, some people have exactly the same problem as I do.
Game is lovely but this should not happen.
Any attempt trying to contact support does nothing as og page for the game support does not exist anymore :)

The game seems interesting, but I cannot recommend due to an unacceptable amount of bugs.

Here's just a sampling of what I encountered in the first three levels:

-in level 2 when you pick up the stake gun i lost access to the shotgun entirely

-in level 2 I destroyed every object to get the tarot card, but it still said I was missing objects (apparently a fan-made patch corrects this?)

-in level 3 I killed every enemy to get the tarot card, but it said I was still missing some (again, supposedly a fan-made patch fixes this)

-when I traverse back across the bridge to check for the "missing" enemies (of which there are none) the bridge glitches out and killed me

It's a shame, because I would have like to see the rest of the game, but I cannot recommend it.

Masterpiece, otherwise https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=193714598.

The good old Havok physics engine & the gore are awesome.
But the chapter V is locked if you only play on the trauma difficulty...

Online: https://www.moddb.com/games/painkiller/downloads/painkiller-164-multiplayer-gamespy-fix.

What?!!!!
Eve was supposed to take off those racks she was wearing,
Not turn into a fucking Demon! T_T

This slavic game is legendary!

bunnyhoping at 50km/h to annihilate clown demons with a makeshift double barreled shotgun is the most fun I've had in a long long time. very fun yet simple movement mechanics, nothing out there is quite like it.

requires tinkering with to get it working properly, just a few mods to drop in your folder and copying text into configs, nothing complicated. just go to its pcwiki page

THE BEST GAME OF MA CHILLHOOD

Highly Recommended.

Totally mindless, incredibly satisfying. I bought it on sale, which was a steal. Dunno if I'd recommend it at full price unless you're fully committed to old shooters, but, you'll probably get more than your money's worth!

I love this game, I really do. More than I should because it is filled with problems. The game crashed on me multiple times, I was softlocked, items were spawned out of bounds and the secrets are out of this world difficult. Yet this jank is what makes this game so special. Don't be dumb like me and 100% this game. It isn't worth it. But its so fun so maybe it is worth it. I can't make up my mind just like this game can never decide if it wants to run or not. Never change, Painkiller

C1E3 has a bridge, its not just a normal bridge but a rickety bridge, made out of drift wood and bungee cords, one wrong move will either, send you flying 100 MPH to the ground, or if you save and load next to this same bridge, there's a small chance it won't be there.

10/10 i love this game great 2004 physics engine

The recent surge of "retro" FPS games could learn a lot from a 2004 gem like this. The first Painkiller is a labor of love that innovates on the old-school/90's FPS formula. With its blend of horror, atmosphere, and over-the-top arena action, this might as well be the Doom 3 that boomer shooters hoped for back in the day.

I would recommend this game to other players!

This game is in my opinion a forgotten gem that should be left alone. Though quite old, it still is far better than many modern shooters today. This game takes the style of a doom style shooter in which you are placed into a level, are given a marker of where to go either through the checkpoints that show you where to go next via the arrow at the top or simply being a bit linear. Throughout your journey of a level you are given swarm after swarm of unique enemies, this adds on a factor of bloodshed as you go through levels destroying everything like they're made of paper. There are a total of 35 levels throughout the game including the expansion and secret bonus level if certain requirements are met to access it. There are also 6 boss fights placed in between every couple sets of levels, all being towering beasts that you have to take down through strategy. It may be a great game, I feel if remade would fail to recapture its audience, as it may be too simple for the people it would sell to.

What the game does right:
+The weapon variety is wonderful with around 8 weapons to collect throughout the game, each feeling greatly unique and pack quite a punch.
+The levels are mostly very unique and feel great to play through, some of my favorites being the Asylum, Orphanage and Loony park.
+Each level has an add-on extra challenge that you can attempt to do, such as collecting all the ammo or finding every secret, this also awards a power-up known as tarot cards once completed.
+The movement feels good, as if you string together a couple jumps, you can go much faster than walking.
+The variety of enemies, though many of them act similar is wonderful, it's always fun to see a completely new cast of enemies throughout almost every level to fit the environment.
+The sound design is wonderful for the guns and make them feel truly satisfying to wield, I can still hear shotgun noises while writing this.

Things it does wrong or just meh:

-The characters have not much to talk about, we have the badass who kills everything, the guide for the badass and a villain who has motives that boil down to wanting power.
-Certain levels are at some points a pain or a slog to complete, the worst offender in my opinion being in the expansion with a mine themed environment with long minecart sections without saves.
-Some game breaking bugs near the start of the game, I only experianced these during the first chapter, the two I encountered were at some point a bridge didn't load in to continue the game and a boss in one of the boss levels didn't spawn.
-Difficulty spikes are quite large. The first three chapters are quite easy, but when you get onto chapter 4, the enemies start having more HP and feel less like weak minions, minibosses start being introduced during the swarms and the boss of this chapter is massively painful for multiple reasons. I am not complaining on difficulty, I just feel it could've been more eased into it over time, instead of a massive difficulty spike at one point, this continues in the expansion too, especially in the second half of it.

Conclusion:

Though this game was greatly enjoyable for me, I am not exactly the target demographic as I am not well versed in shooters, maybe my complaints are entirely due to my lack of prior experiances in this genre, I still thought it was very worth the asking price of 10 euros, I feel any gamers who enjoy shooters or something like doom will find this enjoyable too, as it seems to take many inspirations from its predecessors.

This game is old-school FPS fun!! However it has its fair share of bugs (especially if you dont set the FPS to 60-120 each time you start it!!).

However the problems though , they can't beat the actual power-fantasy and feeling of fPS-joy it has (plus HUGE bosses plus cheesy FMV sequences).

100% approve!!

Cool game.

Sick music for combat.
Great gunplay.
Wide variety of enemies for every level.

Funny animations in cinematics.
Funny voice acting.
Generic ending.

Bosses were a bit ehhh but interesting nonetheless.
Demon transformation at 66 souls was sick but it made you manage your soul intake to use it at a good time.

great arena shooter and really fun. the weapons all look cool as fuck too so thats a bonus

Despite being "on rails" or maybe because of, this game is just a direct, action-packed mindless murderfest with a cool horror-theme. Delete the Gamespy folder before running the game and have a blast!

I can b-hop like a maniac and do trains as if it was cod zombies. Movement is smooth and real nice. Weaponry is good (though is more stingy on the ammo management than doom) but it doesn't matter 'cause there's a mix of minigun and rocket launcher so who gives a fuck.

Pick it on sale over the remake, it's pretty fun.

...oh and just disregard the story, it's total dogshit lmao but you COULD get some enjoyment out of it with the perspective of "it's so garbage it's good"

AH YEA, lastly, uhh this game might NOT like to be minimized at times and can crash at random times. I didn't get that many of these instances but still, be ready for that.