So I've started this game, and like every other FPS ever, I auto jumped to the hardest difficulty--Trauma--for the challenge. At the first boss now, and while he's hard, not impossible. But after doing some digging I am seeing that there are some levels not available on Trauma and some are, and I'm pretty damn confused.

I want to play the whole game, really, with as much challenge as I can get (realistically). So which difficulty should I play on? I'm assuming Trauma isn't it, so that does that mean a restart for me?

Thanks a lot for the help. This is an FPS about killing everything, I didn't expect it to become so convoluted!

Thanks for the clarification. I've heard so many good things about the Hell levels, so I definitely need to play them.

Thanks for this post. I like playing all games on max difficulty and i had no idea what was going on when it wouldn't let me play chapter 5. I kinda wish I could play chapter 5 at max difficulty though. I like how it forced you to play through without saving.

Thanks for this thread. I just bought Painkiller BE for almost nothing, was too easy in Insomnia so i started in Trauma but apparently it's better to first do a "normal" mode, like Nightmare. I guess it's what i'll do.

And thanks to an another thread, i know now all the difficulty levels are unlocked at the beginning due to this BE (Black Edition). I was wondering why i had all this modes available since in the manual there's some things to do explained to get those modes.