Painkiller's Embrace Of Movement Mechanics Could Challenge The Horde Shooter Staples

I'll confess: I haven't played the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Painkiller. I'm aware of its legacy as a cult alternative🍃 to Quake and Doo🍌m, but this preview was the first time I set foot in Purgatory.

So it wasn't nostalgia that drew me towards Anshar Studios' reboot of the series𓃲, but a keen interest in its new direction. I'm a big fan of horde shooters: games where a group of friends mow down waves of enemies, preferably with a compelling premise and some sort of class progression.

When I booted up Painkiller's relatively brief preview, despite being a newbie to the series, I was hit with a wave of familiarity during the tutorial section. It felt a lot like Warhammer: Vermintide 2. A descent into a dark pit with three loquacious companions, accompanied by a monologue that explains the circumstances of the mission? I half expected to be engaged by Ratlings instead of Painki🦩ller's own version of enemy fodder, the demonic Nephilim.

Paradise Lost

The premise of Painkiller involves a war that's unfolding in Purgatory (the neutral afterlife between Heaven and Hell) between God and Azazel, a fallen angel. Your🔴 morally dub🦩ious party is working for Metatron, the voice of God, to thwart Azazel's plans for interplanar domination.

The setting is thoroughly gothic, adapting the kind of divine grey morality you'd find in John Milton's work. During on🧜e of his monologues, Metatron outright says that there's only a "short tumble" between being an angel and the demonic being that Azazel has become.

It's an app𒉰ropriate premise for the structure of the genre: you need a narrative excuse to continuously send groups of players on missions and have them regroup at a central location afterwards. The central conflict of stopping Azazel from raising and supporting a Nephilim invasion force is a natural set-up for Painkiller's missions.

As with Vermintide 2, there appears to be a natural completion order for these missions. The preview only had a couple of missions, but the lay😼out of the UI and the loose connection between the two missions suggests there will be a cohesive, chronological narrative to the missions, even if you can play them in any order.

Gothic Destruction

As is common in the genre, Painkiller has four playable💦 characters that double as classes: Void, Roch, Sol, and Ink. These characters don't play as differently as you'd think, as their signature abilities are just passives. The real depth in Painkiller iꦚs in guns and gun attachments, of which there are many. Each character has access to the same weapons.

The titular Painkiller, a demon-slicing melee weapon, 🌠is an important tool in your arsenal because killing enemies with the Painkiller restores your🐼 ammo, fueling your ranged weapons. It's also the weapon you use to execute mini-boss level enemies once you've stunned them.

I also had access to the Stakegun, a high-damage single-target weapon (sort of like a demon-killing sniper rifle), and the Electrodriver, a rapid-fire projectile weapon. I upgraded the Electrodriver using an attachment that added a bouncing effect to its projectiles, wreaking havoc in large groups of enem🥃ies.

Painki🍸ller, Stakegun, and Electrodriver are all returning weapons from the origiꦜnal Painkiller.

The majority of enemies are variants of Nephilim, humanoid zombie-like demons that charge at you. There's Nephilim with shields, Nephilim that swing large weapons at you, Nephilim wizards that act as annoying ranged enemies. Then some mini-bosses requ♎ire more attention to deal with because of their high damage output. I encountered three different mini-bosses; ideally, a couple more variants will be added before release to keep the gameplay fresh.

Movement Shooter

Painkiller 2025 Pistol Aiming At Bat Demon

The layout of the levels is🥂 inspired by the original Painkiller, which often had the player locked into arenas until they defeated a certain number of waves of enemies.ജ These traditional arenas are joined by liminal zones with fewer enemies and more loot, and areas where you need to accomplish something to progress, usually by filling a blood tank.

These tanks are filled by killing enemies in their vicinity, but the ✤best pa༒rt is that the tanks are subject to a very bouncy physics engine. A stray boot from a Nephilim can send a tank careening off a cliff into a fiery pit, resetting your progress in an instant. It forces players to find a safe location for the tank where enemies can be farmed efficiently. I can see these particular sections becoming very chaotic on higher difficulty levels.

The level desig🍰n is where Painkiller really differs from other horde shooters. Everything has been constructed with the fact that players have two jumps and an air dash in mind. Zones have jump pads, fixed points you can latch yourself towards, or swing from. There's also plenty of fatal drops in place to punish ill-advised dashes from panicked play𓆏ers.

It's an experience you can ful🤪ly engage with: you're constantly shooting, kiting, dashing and reacting to a rapidly changing environment; there's never downtime when you're mid-battle. The mobility of Painkiller is its unique selling point in a stacked genre with several popular and well-supported games.

Unfortunately, the preview eཧnds just as you encounter the first boss. The abrupt 'Thanks for Playing' just as the boss's health bar appears is reminiscent of an old demo disc that cuts you off right before the good part to encourage you to buy the game. I imagine a similar version of the preview will be released as a public demo at some point.

Every game in this genre comes with a simple caveat: how much content and variety will the game have at launch? Both the levels I pl🗹ayed had lengthy sections where I had to fill blood tanks, for example, which will rapidly lose its charm if every level has one🗹. There needs to be variety in mission objectives to keep the core gameplay loop feeling fresh, and I hope Anshar has made that a priority. Nothing can stop a game's momentum faster than excessive repetition.

Painkiller is set to release on Oct🌄ober 9 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series ❀X/S.