Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original DOOMs in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex modern FPSes. There are no stealth elements, no key hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your ear, no mission objectives besides kill everyone—it's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be. It's pure genocidal fun.
— Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Zero Punctuation
