Let's just put thing to rest. Painkiller is a pure unadulterated fun with little pretense of being anything else than an old-school kill'em'all shooter. It works surprisingly well with this formula.
Playing PK you will focus on one main thing only - action. The core gameplay is - move into the area, kill all the baddies (preferably in a very bloody limb scattering way) and move to the next one. And what Painkiller doesn't suffer from, is a lack of variety. While the game colours are dark, as befitting of a Satanic themed shooter, they are not just greys and browns we are fed with modern FPSes.
The enemies are also worthy of a special attention as there are loads of them and every stage has different ones. You will rarely see familiar faces while blasting them to pieces with a shotgun. In between chapters we are bound to meet boss enemies and they are some baddest meanest motherscratchers ever seen. They tower over you for hundreds of metres and you won't be able to kill them by just blasting them away. No, sir, some of the boss battles are riddles that you need to solve in order to kill them.
You are given lots of bizarre and wonderful weapons for the pest control. Not two, not three like in the modern realistic games, but all five in the core game and two more in the expansion. And when I said bizarre weapons, I meant that. All of them have two attack modes (for example, a shotgun that can also temporarily freeze enemies, and if you shoot them at that moment... ;-)) and some of them with whole three modes (like a gun that shoots shurikens or lightning, or shurikens charged with lightning... O_o).
And if the guns are not enough, you can acquire tarot cards by completing stages in a certain way (for example, by not getting hurt at all). Cards are like magic powers that you can employ during the game - increase the damage dealt or temporarily become invincible.
Oh, and let's not forget the heavy metal music score that will follow you the whole way and really fits the mood of blasting everything that moves and some that doesn't move to pieces.
Of course the game cannot be without flaws. Sometimes the action tended to become repetitive "clean the area/move/clean another area". Also I'm a fan of strong plot in my games and if PK's plot would be any weaker, it would vaporise. Few and sparse cutscenes are there probably only to show off cinematic achievements as they do not advance plot at all. Furthermore, the expansion pack "Battle out of Hell" is kind of bland and not memorable.
However, despite the flaws, this is a very strong package that will keep you entertained for a sufficient time if you seek simple mindless fun.
