Anshar Studios is undoubtedly gorgeous when it slides down the hills along the bones of its Unreal Engine 5-powered underworld Pain medicine The reboot feels like a genuine continuation of the Cult Classic Boomer Shooter series. In these fleeting moments, smooth movement and bass bullets combine with the enthusiasm of FPS’ greatness, but it’s all destroyed as soon as the core cooperative purpose brings you back to Earth.
Painkiller (2025) is not a remake of the 21-year-old’s original, nor is it the natural successor to the intermittently followed Rapid Fire single-player shooter. Instead, you come across it as a cooperative FPS game that cosplays as a painkiller. It’s a compelling imitation on the surface – it sees the parts, and certainly hears it – but the transition to a smooth, checklist-filled purpose shooter erodes the series’ strong single-player structure.
As a member of a three-person team tasked with stopping Angel Azazel from fighting hell and invading the Earth, your mission briefing is simple, choosing weapons that will erase your death and their elemental effects, selecting your character based on your flashy buffs, drinking some unlockable tarot cards, and jumping into a quick match. For games that draw from the rebellious aesthetics of metal album covers of the 80s and 90s, I feel that multiplayer setups are particularly safe and expected.
For my preview, Anshar has access to two missions: the smeared quarry and the cathedral bridge were cut off just before fighting the boss. I mean, I couldn’t fight the big bad. For both missions, a combination of slide, jump and hook shot mechanics will skirt around a gorgeous Gothic arena. These short bursts suggest that the team understands the flow of classic painkillers when pumping countless shotgun shells to the devil with Bible displays of blood and visceral Bible without the need to reload.
However, the true highlights of the experience are never seen in its main purpose. This will lock you in a small arena, leaving it to kill enemy waves and collect blood in barrels. Although it can be oddly boring when you consider the subject, the corridors between these key moments are far more interesting, boasting the challenges and hidden secrets of a new platform. It’s here that you can feel the heart of getting away from the heart of the series’ identity wrestling.
Anshar tries to inject more excitement through a Devil May Cry-esque style scoring system. The better your murder and the greater your execution, the higher your score. But it works in the game’s cooperative design, especially the blood barrel segment that inevitably concentrates on meeting personal challenges rather than playing goals. Also, the system does not seem to formalize or even formalize a sense of competition while loading up combos, as it cannot see ratings of team members’ styles.
The Core Gun Play is clearly amazing throughout, and despite a undoubtedly humble budget, the cruel and punchy Arsenal of painkillers approaches Doom: The Dark Age, which rivals ID’s own destiny, even though he only has two weapons in each mission. Almost every gun is a weapon that comes back from the painkiller black: stake guns are the equivalent of your bolt-action rifle, electro-driver is a high-speed machine gun, shotguns are a close-range beast, rocket launchers are what you expect, and SMGs can dodge iron through iron horns. The only new addition is the hand cannon. Ironically, it hits like a kick to the stallion’s chest with a bottomless 6 shooting device.
When you play, you can earn gold and ancient souls to unlock permanent upgrades and additional alt fire modes. All alt fires focus on one of three elemental types: electricity, fire, or ice. In most cases, each weapon will tear the enemy at a pace that you feel is indistinguishable from each other. However, every time a mini-boss has its own health bar, the combination of elemental attacks definitely makes a simple dash into the long drawn battle and the next battle.
There’s also a seventh weapon that you won’t forget, and the one that every character has by default is painkillers. The equivalent of the spinning reblade chainsaw, the same name in the series, is always available and tied to the game’s hook shot mechanic. It looks, hears, and decent damage, but with three players dealing damage in a compressed arena, the enemy types are mostly fused together, so there is little time or incentive to use it.
It’s a shame that the game appears to be strangled by its own structure as much as combat can feel. Its main purpose rarely regenerates combat strength, but its degraded score system works proactively against successful cooperation.
Like other previews, Anshar’s painkillers reimagining can be seen when additional locations, enemy types, weapons and more are released on October 9th. It often maintains a susceptible element through the cheesecloth, a modern plant design, and a dull main objective objective range. Like the metalheads of Sunday service, painkillers don’t look like they’re at all suited, but as the campaign progresses, their solid bones can still crack and heal in the right direction, so they’re not ready to give up yet.
