One of the greatest shooters of the early 2000's.
Fatal1ty made a lot of money off this game and it was fun to watch.
MP is NOT DEAD in the EU from what Ive been told, but the N.A. scene is thin at best. The single player is a lot of fun, so there is always that to fall back to IF you can not find a game in the STATES.
Buy it when its on sale. You wont regret it.

Heyyo, an homeage to classic FPS games, Painkiller Black Edition sports the original Painkiller with expansions. This is one badass game with the 2foot long wooden steak launcher and the gun that shoots shuriken and lighting bolts... the most badass gun in fps history.

Really good old school shooter

Still one of my favourite old school FPS games alongside golden oldies like DOOM, Quake & Serious Sam, if you like those games you'll like the original Painkiller.

Black Edition also includes the expansion pack 'Battle Out of Hell' which is brilliant visually, but the gameplay suffers due to some enemies having confusing methods of dispatching them & the level design isn't quite as solid I feel.

Still, I feel it's worth the price of admission just for the original game's singleplayer campaign, the implementation of Havok physics is mainly just for hilarious enemy ragdoll effects but the inventive weapons (each with 2 firing modes) & the tarot card system adds a little strategic thinking to the otherwise mindless shooting of hordes of enemies, especially on higher difficulties. The objectives required to unlock these tarot cards are different for each level in the game & can be a bit tedious & annoying on certain levels so you may want to focus on just getting the most useful cards rather than all of them.

Stake crossbow, check
unlimited undead, check

Painkiller is, in parts a railroad FPS, that really throws hell at you, and some. the only game to come close to this would be Serious Sam, but Painkiller is more gritty, and replaces one liners for mistifying cut scenes. It's not totally my cup-of-tea, but I do enjoy playing it when I pick it up. I suppose the lack of objectives throughout the map is what spoils it, along with the music track which is a little but too in your face during combat moments.

8/10

Painkiller is a game where you kill enemies with a stake gun. That's right. It's a gun that shoots wooden stakes. Impale demonic World War I soldiers against a wall! Or you can freeze them with the alt-fire of your shotgun, then blow them to bits with the primary fire.

Painkiller is pretty rad, although I never did beat the game.

To quote "Painkiller is ♥♥♥♥ing Awesome" Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, painkiller is ♥♥♥♥ing awesome. A wonderful retreat back into "Shoot Everything That Moves" land, Painkiller has a great sense of style, difficulty progression and zany weaponry. Each level has a cool concept, populated by equally atmospheric adversaries that are fun to eviscerate, explode, or pin to walls with your giant stake gun. The final levle is an incredibly fun take on everyones favorite nine-tiered dungeon, and has to be played to be truly appreciated.

The expansion "Battle Out Of Hell" continues with new weapons and more levels. Although many are equally as impressive as thier counterpars in the original game, the difficulty curve cuts far steeper, as Russian Suicide Bombers and Nazis...(Surprising they didn't make the cut for the original game really) will really test your skills in the Leningrad level.

In all though, when you're tired of dealing with bland quests, uninspired plots or character, or even every sentient thing around you, it never hurts to fire up a game that rewards for simply murdering everything in-front of you.

Painkiller is a wonderful throwback to older first-person shooters where the purpose was to run into the midst of enemies and kill them while dodging their fire, instead of hiding behind cover and popping out to take pot shots occasionally. Additionally, it has quite possibly the widest variety and sheer scope of weapons available in first person shooters, including a weapon which fires large sharpened wooden staves, and one which shoots shirukens and lightning, just to give you a taste.

While the sequels do not quite stand up to the original, this original game is simply great and will completely whet the appetite of someone who's looking for a more pure run and gun experience than modern shooters provide.

If you are old enough to have played Quake, then you will probably enjoy Painkiller. There is no rhym or reason behind the game. Just kill everything that moves.

CoD player? Read here then skip to the last lines: HOLY CRAP! WHAM! BLAM! COLORS! SOUNDS?! PEW PEW!

Do you actually take time to play and enjoy games? Read here: Get this game. It's really well made and worth your attention.

Autism? Social CONVENTIONS?! EYE CONTACT? WITH PEOPLE?!?! : This game does so many things right that they become nearly indiscernable until you stop to really look. In fact, the reason NONE of the Painkiller knockoffs have managed to be fun is apparent. Painkiller isn't about throwing a bunch of random cool looking enemies at you because HOLY CRAP! It's about a very subtle attention to pacing. The enemies at the start and at the end of Painkiller are a carefully planned spectrum. You get a bunch of easy fights, a slightly niftier new enemy, a bunch of easy fights, a newer niftier enemy, easy fights.... you get to a point that it all seems tired but if you look back, its a spiral staircase slowly building you up to a point that you're a god compared to the trash you started the game fighting. But at the same time you were dazzled by baubles strung along to distract you.

Awesome levels in terms of space (at the time in the early 00's it was pretty neat-o) and in terms of detail (Get absorbed into the game and tell me you haven't visited Limbo recently), Sounds are a bit meh at times and "That's cool" at others. Nothing stands out. Overall graphics were good for the time and, unless you really stop to critque them, they haven't faded much. The ambient and battle musics transition well, you're kept in the realm of "what's happening now." Blended together you get a game that Epic Games rightly caught wind of. People May Fly joins Epic Games, some "Cool 'bro" happens then we wind up with BULLETSTORM!!! And if you loved Painkiller, admit it, you LOVED Bulletstorm.

Either way: Cool game bro!

Something something shurikens and lightning.

FPS the way it should be: with big guns and big monsters to shoot with your big guns. Great weapons, each with multiple firing modes, make the slaughter of hundreds of Hellspawn as exciting as ever.

Shoot lots of dudes with interesting weapons. Fight your way into hell to kill Satan. So metal.

THE BALLS.
More Doom than Doom 3.
Classic FPS.

"Enter area, kill all enemies, repeat" Done right.

Painkiller allows you to pin enemies to walls with giant wooden stakes, and then shoot hellspawn with spinning blades of death that result in a shower of blood. On this basis alone, Painkiller is worth a few hours of your time. The weapons are some of the most imaginative that you will experience, and the enemies are just as interesting. The storyline is a tired trope, but it's little more than an excuse to deal death to hordes of demons, clowns, nazis, witches, zombies, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Also the bosses you fight are truly epic in scale as they tower above buildings and clouds alike. The sheer variety of weapons and baddies keep things from getting stale, but the gameplay is a little one dimensional, as you are simply tasked with obliterating everything you see. But there is a genius in that simplicity as you creatively carve up throngs of adversaries. 7.5/10

If you want to take a break from the pretentious modern toss shooters, this game is for you. Featuring ridiculous and awesome guns to fire and lots of dudes to shoot at, and none of the BS fetch and escort missions. Also very replayable with different missions available in different difficulty levels as well as cards to unlock.

Buy painkiller. It's really good. That is all.

Over the top FPS in the style of DOOM. Don't bother with the sequels/expansions; this is the best one of the series. Crazy weapons (a gun that shoots shurikens AND lightning), great old-school level design that encourages exploration and rewards completionists, and some semblance of a plot to keep pushing you forward. There's a "black tarot" system where you unlock cards to give yourself active & passive powerups by performing certain tasks in levels. You equip these between maps and they give you unique boosts such as increasing your base health, faster movement speed, and temporary invincibility. Not many games can competently pull off the old school style of FPS and I think the is one of the better ones.

If you like games like DOOM, Serious SAM, or basic FPS action games without stories, then this is an AWESOME game for you. Super giant and fun levels, bosses, and guns. No real story, just random level after random level. Do not expect any smart AI though... they fall on the really dumb side of AI. About the level of DOOM AI.