PAINKILLER RTX MOD

Why buy the new Painkiller when you can make the old one look dynamite?

- Andy Chalk

The new Painkiller is out now, and it brings me no pleasure to say that it's really not very good - although it does at least maintain the 20-year streak of Painkiller followups being pale, flaccid imitations of the original.

NuPainkiller feels smaller and more constrained than the original, although the basic structure is similar: Enter an area, doors close behind you, kill a bunch of guys, doors open, move forward, rinse and repeat. Along with new weapons, the full game features classics from the first game, such as the Stake Gun, Electrodriver and the whirling-blade Painkiller, and they all feel more or less like they did back then.

Anyway, Painkiller - the new one - is fine, really, in the sense that it's a videogame that looks reasonably good and runs reasonably well and did not do any harm to my PC. I can't think of any real reason to recommend it, but neither would I actively try to steer anyone away from it, either.

KILLER PAINS