Painkiller: Hell & Damnation is currently available for the PC, with an Xbox 360 and PS3 version to release early next year.

Ever since I was a child, I have loved the first person shooter. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are coming home from a hard day of being the weird kid at school, and playing the likes of Doom, Half-Life, Deus-Ex, Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1942. I get overwhelmingly upset when thinking about how little the genre really means, nowadays, with that game having its annual re-skinned release to the joy of many a 14 year old, and every other franchise effectively cloning it and slapping on a different title. Sometimes, I just want to play an old-school shooter, if only to make sure that my mind hasn’t been completely marred by the simplicity of the modern. It’s far from perfect, but Painkiller: Hell & Damnation does a good job of reminding me of how things used to be.

It’s no surprise, though, as the game is actually a remake of the original Painkiller that was released in 2004. You see, the subtitle, Hell & Damnation, is actually an acronym for ‘HD’ and the game takes 14 levels from the original (and expansion, Battle out of Hell), updating them with the Unreal Engine 3. There are also a couple of other additions, such as a particularly irritating enemy with a shield that blocks most of what you can throw at it, and a new gun called the ‘soul catcher’ which is both useful and awesome.

With it being a remake, the story is very much the same. You play as Daniel Garner, a dead man stuck in purgatory who just wants to be reunited with his also-dead wife, Catherine. In order to do this, Daniel makes a deal with the grim reaper (always a good idea) to capture 7000 souls in exchange for being with his beloved. That puts you in the conveniently exciting position where you travel from location to location blowing monsters away with an array of incredibly entertaining guns in a similar fashion to Serious Sam. The story is reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, in the way that it is poor, futile and seemingly non-existent with random cutscenes occasionally dropping in between levels to remind you that there is a reason why you are killing thousands of monsters.

The cutscenes themselves manage to keep in the same league as the story – below average. When I reviewed Garshasp a few weeks ago, I mentioned that the protagonist sounded like he was voiced by Duke Nukem. Well, in a strange coincidence, Daniel from Painkiller actually is voiced by Duke Nukem. Voice actor Jon St. John lends his vocal chords to the character in what is likely meant to be a throwback to the game’s influences, delivering some lines that are beyond cheesy in a rather unconvincing fashion. The actual recording quality of the dialogue is also atrocious, with no feeling of acoustic integration into the world and one character having a very annoying high pitched drone in the background whenever she is talking.

But this all negates the reason why you play Painkiller HD, and it is safe to say that there is plenty of entertainment to be had with the gameplay. It has a fantastic grasp of the fast-paced, old-school action that fans of days-gone-by will adore, and there are some brilliantly designed weapons that never seem to get boring. From the titular painkiller that hacks your enemies to pieces to the fan-favourite stake gun that pins your enemies to the wall (as well as doubling up as a grenade launcher) you will struggle to get tired of these mad death-bringers. Making them even cooler is the fact that all the weapons have an alternate fire button, doubling the madness. The shotgun’s alt can freeze your enemies, for instance, and the shrunken gun can fire a constant arc of electricity that passes through enemies close to one another. Perhaps the real draw, though, is how much some of these weapons punish your enemies; there are arms, legs and head blowing off in all directions, especially when you get the rocket launcher or soul catcher out on a huge group of minions.

But what is the point in having loads of cool ordinance if there are no awesome enemies to use it on? Luckily, Painkiller is one step ahead: You will be fighting undead warriors, dwarven witches, and hooded axe-throwers alongside the somewhat darker examples of evil clowns, and demonic children that set themselves on fire. The enemies are varied enough to remain interesting but struggle to create much of a challenge on normal difficulty. The game is littered with ammo and, provided you are in a somewhat open space like you are with the majority of the game, you won’t find a single enemy that can catch up with you when you are running backwards and gunning them all down. The most challenging moments you will find are when you are either in a confined space or having to deal with both melee chasers and ranged attackers. However, your primary tactics will consist of circle-strafing and bunny hopping whilst the rush-mentality daemons chase you around trying to eat your face, which is not a bad thing at all. You will very quickly learn how down-right awesome it is to get all of your enemies chasing after you in one long line and then seeing how many you can take out with a single saw-blade shot from the soul-catcher gun.

The Unreal Engine 3 has done a good job of updating the game. It will by no means make your jaw drop, but there is a noticeable improvement over the original game with the textures and lighting especially. The levels have a hit-and-miss visual appeal, with some highlights being the carnival and the orphanage, but there isn’t much in the way of real aesthetic draw to your surroundings. They are all seemingly random, as well, where one moment you are in an opera house, the next you are in a swamp and the next you are in a stereotypical gothic castle. It would have been nice to have a sense of coherent journey between the levels, but they all do their job as great and varied arenas for massive amounts of slaughter.

Unfortunately, as fun as the slaughter is, Painkiller HD seems to lack the polish that it deserves. Every game has bugs, but some of the bugs in this game are completely bizarre. For instance, I was in the middle of a level, getting on fine, when suddenly my triggers reversed and right mouse was fire and left mouse was alt fire. It was hilariously random, but quite jarring at the same time as the key bindings were all still correct in the options. Other issues include getting stuck on pieces of the environment causing me to uncontrollably spin around, and I experienced a level-breaking issue where one enemy just would not die no matter how much I threw at it; restarting from checkpoint did not solve the issue so I had to start the whole level again. When you combine this with some frustrating design choices like sometimes having to kill every enemy before proceeding to the next part of the level and having to wait a bit too long for the collectable souls to appear over the dead bodies of your enemies, it really breaks up the destructive, fast-paced action that makes the game stand out.

As great as the campaign is, it is a rather brief experience. You can complete the 14 levels in less than five hours, although the genuine fun had whilst playing the game makes a replay very appealing. However, if you do get bored with the four levels of difficulty or have collected every tarot card (Painkiller’s answer to limited in-game perks), there is always the multiplayer. In very similar old-school flavour, you get a very classic deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag modes alongside the new co-op and four-player horde mode. They all work well despite co-op being a bit un-refined and easy, and brought back fond memories of Quake and Unreal Tournament. The simple enjoyment of getting into a lobby and blowing some other players to smithereens has been seemingly long forgotten and replaced by perk-ridden, class-based XP grinders, so it feels great to experience all of that classic mayhem again.

But that is where the beauty of Painkiller: Hell & Damnation comes from: it certainly isn’t for everyone, but for fans of the classic first-person-shooter formula, you can’t go wrong. It falls down with the poor story and lacks the polish and presentation of a top-notch game, but if you are looking for a simple, old-school, ridiculously entertaining shooter with monsters gibbing all over the place… Welcome to Painkiller.

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