The focus of Painkiller is frenetic action and this means most levels are packed with hordes of enemies. The environments are varied and show off aspects of the dark side of human existence from medieval witch burnings to war torn cities. The player has a range of weaponry at their disposal and must clear each level of bad guys before facing down boss characters in order to progress. They kept things simple with this game so there are no puzzles to solve this is just pure adrenaline fuelled violence with a heavy rock soundtrack.
The best feature in the game is the varied weapon set which includes the eponymous painkiller, a sort of mechanical weapon which when activated opens to reveal rapidly rotating blades, secondary fire is a beam which can be attached to the environment and used to scythe enemies down. The rest of the weapon set is more conventional so you get a shotgun, a chaingun, a stakegun and an electrodriver. Every weapon has a primary fire and secondary so the chaingun works as a machine gun in primary fire and secondary fire is a rocket launcher, the electrodriver fires shurikens and has lightning as secondary fire, the shotgun has a traditional primary fire and secondary fire is a kind of freeze effect. My favourite weapons is definitely the stakegun, stakes are fired by primary fire and can nail enemies to the environment, while secondary fire converts the gun to a handy grenade launcher which fires bouncing grenades. The expansion pack added a flamethrower and a bolt driver to the line up.
As you despatch enemies you can collect their souls and destroying things in each level will reward you with gold coins which you can spend on power-up tarot cards between levels. These are familiar concepts but the different style of implementation creates new game challenges and gives Painkiller a better replay value. Each section features a few levels followed by a boss fight and as usual the bosses can only be defeated in a specific way, this is as close as the game gets to providing you with a puzzle.
