‘Painkiller: Hell And Damnation’ Review – Fresh Paint Fails To Cover A Bland Experience

Having never played the original Painkiller, I was anxious to jump into my copy of Painkiller: Hell and Damnation, a remake of the aforementioned 2004 title. My logical thinking was that if a game is popular enough that the developers warrant a high-definition remake, the game must be good. Sadly, I found my logic foiled after spending hardly two hours with Painkiller: Hell and Damnation.

It is worth noting that the original Painkiller was developed by People Can Fly, which, after successfully porting Gears of War to the PC, was acquired by Epic Games and went on to develop 2011′s Bulletstorm. Painkiller: Hell and Damnation was developed by The Farm 51, a company founded by two ex-People Can Fly designers, and a few other industry veterans. DreamCatcher Interactive, the original publisher of Painkiller has since been purchased by Nordic Games who then gave The Farm 51 permission to create a re-make of Painkiller.

However, Painkiller: Hell and Damnation is not the only Painkiller game released since the game’s original debut. Painkiller: Overdose, Painkiller: Resurrection, Painkiller: Redemption, and Painkiller: Recurring Evil have all been released as followup games to the original, all expanding upon the Painkiller canon in one way or another.

None of those four expansions received much praise. So, with the mediocre sequels in mind, perhaps Nordic Games thought it would be a good idea to slap a fresh coat of paint over the most popular Painkiller title, the original, and see if the fish would come out to bite.

Apart from playing the Turok games on the Nintendo 64, I had very little experience with this type of over-the-top kill-all-the-things first-person shooter. You might not even consider Turok to be in league with Doom or Quake (I would not blame you), but as far as my experience with corridor-shooters go, Turok is it. So, because of that, I was able to approach Painkiller:  Hell and Damnation with a relatively open mind, unaware of what to really expect.

Painkiller: Hell and Damnation tells the story of Daniel Gardner, a guy who has found himself in Purgatory, working for the devil to keep himself from going to hell. For whatever reason, the devil wants souls but is incapable of harvesting souls on his own. It is Daniel’s job to go out and collect seven-thousand souls.

The story elements in-game are about as scarce as can be. It feels like The Farm 51 assumes players will come into the game already familiar with the lore. Regardless, it is clear that the story in Painkiller: Hell and Damnation takes a backseat to just about everything else the game offers. This left me confused at times, as I would be playing through a train station, then suddenly I would be in tower ruins, fighting a dragon; absolutely no explanation given. There is also this character called Eve who would show up randomly and say things about things that I had no idea anything about. It was like being a kid, and having grown-ups talk about things in the same room you are in, not having a clue what they are going on about.

But like I said, the story of Painkiller: Hell and Damnation isn’t why people play the game, and once I realized that, I was able to ignore it. Which, honestly was not that hard of a task.

The gameplay boils down to the player spawning in an area, eliminating the monsters that spawn in, and moving on to the next area, to trigger the next wave. I could never quite figure out if this was supposed to be fun. The enemies spawn in and run straight at you. Sometimes, they even stop to try and shoot at you. Sometimes.

The enemy path-finding is laughably bad. There were times when I could divert an entire room of enemies simply by jumping down to a lower level, and watching the artificial-intelligence direct the monsters all the way to the other end of the room where the only staircase is. Apparently the monsters of hell are afraid of heights.

Because the enemies run straight at you, it makes shooting them incredibly dull. There were entire portions of chapters where I simply ran backwards and used the Soul Harvester (a weapon that latches onto enemies and sucks their souls out, hardly any aiming required) to kite a mob around.

There are boss fights, but they are as dull as the mobs. Perhaps slightly less engaging. At least with the mobs, you have more than one target. I played through roughly three-quarters of the game, and only had one boss fight that was almost fun. This particular fight involved a giant, literally a massive giant, who could whip up tornadoes and summon forth skeleton soldiers from the ground. Because he was so massive, though, it made killing him almost painless, as I literally could not miss hitting him.

The only sort of replayability I found in these levels were that there are certain achievements in each level that unlock Tarot cards which unlock special abilities. Unless I missed something (I did play the tutorial) the game never tells you how to even activate these abilities, and I had to look up the button-binding in the options menu. I would have expected this rather prominent ability to have been addressed in the tutorial, at least.

To Painkiller: Hell and Damnation’s credit though, for as much chaos is displayed on-screen, I never once experienced a frame-rate drop, and the game ran smooth as butter through my entire experience.

The game’s physical design is its best quality. As random as they are, the levels are all distinct and unique, and there are a handful of unique monsters located within every area. The first zone, the graveyard, is one of my favorites. It was really spooky, and it sets a really strong tone for the rest of the game.

The soundtrack, on the other hand, ruins the moment. As soon as the monsters spawn in, it’s a death-metal concert loud-and-clear, where the band only knows one song, and just keeps playing it. Every, single, time. I like heavy metal, I listen to it all the time, but I ended up turning the music off while playing, and listened to my own heavy metal playlist (which did include more than one track!).

The multiplayer is dead. It’s a purgatory of its own. Until recently there were not even dedicated North American servers running, and even before them, all of the European servers were totally empty. I thought something was wrong with my game, so I checked out the forums on Painkiller: Hell and Damnation’s website to look for a fix. What I found was rather bothersome: this forum post radiates some multiplayer concerns, and then over on the Steam forums are countless complaints about there being no one in multiplayer. The Farm 51 developers have dropped a few comments throughout the forums about working on a fix…but, I think the damage has been done, and those that had any interest in multiplayer have moved on.

I really cannot recommend this game to anyone but those of you who really, really, liked the original. So basically, if you are a hardcore Painkiller fan, and are just looking for a single-player experience (since everything else is, hopefully only momentarily, broken), then perhaps you might enjoy Painkiller: Hell and Damnation. Everyone else: save your money.

Review summary Pros:

Single-player runs smoothly, crisp graphics, varied locations

Cons:

Multiplayer is broken, repetitive soundtrack, bad A.I., dull gameplay overall

Rating: 40%