In light of the recent announcement of the franchise’s return, I decided to open the dusty, rotting, cobweb-covered trunk of my library of almost-forgotten (but still dearly loved) classics and fire up the powerful and timeless Painkiller: Black Edition

Painkiller is the essence of an era—a fantasy and tone that captures everything early 2000s kids thought was cool, in all its embarrassingly simple and cringe-worthy glory:

Leather jackets and jeans, cowboy boots, guns, and a soundtrack that only your mom would’ve called “heavy music”.

There used to be a meme of a news headline with a photo of a sad boy and the caption: “George wants to be Hardcore, but his mom won’t let him.”

Painkiller is the game George wanted to play.

An explosive FPS, focused on the unpretentious, brainless experience of wandering through all sorts of horror-themed environments while sending thousands of enemies straight to hell using weapons of mass destruction.

What’s not to love?

Today, the game could easily be mistaken for the stereotype of a generic shooter: a walk-and-shoot game, dark, edgy, virtually devoid of any kind of meaningful narrative, cartoonish horror themes (you literally start by shooting skeletons in a graveyard), slow and limited movement, basic level design, rudimentary enemies based on gimmicks, virtually no tactical depth, and a soundtrack made up of the most generic and interchangeable metal riffs I’ve ever heard.

Giant enemy hordes and heavy metal. Sounds like a joke.

But Painkiller might just be the best kind of “generic” shooter that could exist. Very polished (almost flawless) and with an irresistible appeal that comes precisely from how simple and well-executed its core elements are.

Shooting is appropriately satisfying, with all the feedback effects you could want and weapons with well-defined, distinct concepts.

Movement, although slow, doesn’t feel constraining in any way and is well-balanced relative to enemy movement and the spaces you need to traverse (and you can bunny hop around to speed things up).

The levels, while not particularly interesting to navigate or explore, offer a wide variety of concepts (some quite striking), and often have an atmosphere that helps pace the experience, filling the gaps between fights.

The fights themselves, for the most part, are well-structured, and the variety of enemies and carefully planned, unusual situations retain a genuine freshness throughout most of the experience.

The lack of complexity in the game’s premise means you learn how to play almost instantly and rarely need to make any drastic adjustments to deal with new challenges. Everything thrown at you is easily absorbed in favor of fluid, frenetic action—and discarded and replaced before things get boring.

It’s not a very hard game either, but it is appropriately punishing if you push your luck too far.

And the music—well, besides the ambient tracks that play during calm moments, the action tracks somehow fit like a spiked glove, wrapping everything up in something cohesive and full of personality.

And the story, at least, isn’t intrusive. You can skip it.

For better or worse, this design clarity is what makes it so easy to come back to and recommend to others. The game is cheap, packed with content, and knows exactly what it’s here to do. It’s addictive, entirely built not to stray from what it does best and to keep repetition from ever settling in.

It's quite clear that the studio put a lot of work and care into ensuring that the game doesn't simply feel like a mindless horde shooter. Even though it is, at its core, exactly that.

Yes, it's a very outdated game, but like Doom, it still maintains a timeless freshness due to how solid and pure the experience is.

You could say Painkiller is a more condensed, less annoying, darker version of Serious Sam, but I think that would be selling it short.

So, yeah… given that, Hell & Damnation, which is a sort of remake/reboot/graphical overhaul, quickly proves itself almost completely irrelevant within the first few missions.

I’m giving it a negative rating, but the content included is competent—being practically identical to the original—but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a bit dumb for spending money on it.

Black Edition still runs well on modern systems (the GOG version), and the graphical “leap” in Hell & Damnation is far from noteworthy.

Black Edition is cheaper, has way more content, and the experience delivers basically all the same strengths of the updated version—often even better, since some visual and sound details are missing in Hell & Damnation.

The original’s visuals aged better too, retaining details that fit the horror aesthetic much more effectively—like the lighting, shadows, and lack of glossy surfaces that make everything look like plastic in the remake.

A good chunk of the levels—including some of the most memorable ones—were cut or turned into DLC (which I’m obviously not buying). There’s barely any new or reworked content, very few new enemies and many are just outright missing.

I don’t think there’s even a single new level.

The music is practically the same, the sound effects are practically the same, the visual effects are practically the same.

Mechanically, the game IS the same, and the most notable new additions are a slight improvement to a (single) horrible boss fight from the original, one or two new weapons, a slightly faster shotgun and a “Continue” option directly from the start screen.

It’s practically the same game—just reduced and worse in several ways.

And the few things they could have improved—especially the bosses—weren’t improved at all.

And they forgot the sound of the spurs when the protagonist walks!

Honestly, I was a bit shocked when I finished the game in just two sittings, while the original took me twice as long—and even has a 10-level expansion I’ve never fully played.

So: Save your money, buy Black Edition, and forget this one.

ewegergrgd

Playing side by side, I would say that this game is the best way to experience Painkiller nowadays. It has good graphics and the best maps of the original and previous entries. Buy it on a big sale with all DLC and enjoy.