Painkiller: Hell Wars

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on March 15, 2006

Final Glimpse: Blood, bullets, zombie demons Ц sounds like a party!

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It seems like a FPS lover's dream come true, a Frankensteinian love child between Doom's demonic creepiness and Serious Sam's over-the-top frenetic action. But fortunately for gamers, this dream will become reality when Painkiller: Hell Wars hits your Xbox with a bloody thump.

Released almost two years ago on the PC, Painkiller was an homage to the old school twitch shooter where you didn't have to worry about distractions like boring puzzle solving, annoying jumping sequences, complicated ammo reloading, pesky weapon-changing animation or even something as silly as a story; instead, Polish developer People Can Fly simply let gamers do what they love best Ц blasting hordes of enemies into chunky wet giblets.

Hell Wars is promising to deliver the same frantic shooter action to the Xbox and satisfy our demon-killing bloodlust. You will play as Daniel Garner, who is killed in a car accident and ends up stuck in purgatory limbo between Heaven and Hell; and if that wasn't bad enough, you are forced to fight off the armies of Hell who are gearing up to invade Heaven. Boy, some days it just pays to stay in bed. Anyway, the story is really just an excuse for you to shoot ugly monsters Ц as if gamers need an excuse in the first place.

Instead of simply porting over the PC version, Hell Wars will combine the 20 best levels from the original and the Battle Out of Hell expansion pack, along with the usual gameplay tweaking required for the console. The exact level selection is not yet known, but so far we've seen an insane asylum, opera house, ancient church, creepy orphanage, medieval town, Alcatraz-like prison and WWII bunkers.

Every level will be completely different with no inter-relationship between them, which may not make sense story-wise but that's not the point; instead, it will give you some very cool and interesting locales to blow away some freaky-looking enemies. What does make sense is that each level will have a unique set of enemies matched to that location, so you'll fight undead soldiers in the war bunkers and disturbing zombie children in the orphanage, for example. Creepy.

The weapons don't make much sense either but one thing's for sure: they sound like a helluva lotta fun. There will only be five weapons but they will all be crazy powerful thanks to their bizarrely matched-up alternate fire modes. For example, the devastating double-barrel shotgun has an alt fire that allows you to freeze enemies with liquid nitrogen and shatter them into a gazillion pieces. Nice! The rocket launcher's alt fire is a chaingun, which could make it one of the most uber-powerful FPS weapons ever. The stake gun shoots wooden stakes that can pin enemies to walls (or even to each other Ц how cool is that?) with a grenade launcher as the secondary fire, and the unusual electrodriver spits out shurikens as the primary and lightning bolts as the alt fire. Finally, the aptly named Painkiller is a weed-whacker-like spinning blade melee weapon that also fires a bladed projectile connected by a deadly energy beam that can slice through anything in its path. Master Chief ain't got nothing on Daniel!

You will have ample opportunity to use each weapon because the game clearly pays homage to the original Doom with a healthy serving of Serious Sam. This means you'll be constantly swarmed by waves of aggressive enemies and meet some freaking huge bosses. Each kill should be completely satisfying as you will be able to splash enormous Mortal Kombat quantities of blood when you gib enemies into meaty chunklets. Yummy!

The over-the-top mayhem is enhanced by the proprietary PAIN engine that makes for some very impressive graphics indeed. Though not as good looking as Doom 3, Halo or any Tom Clancy shooter, it still looks pretty darn good for a small independent developer. It feels similar to the Serious Sam engine (also created by a small independent eastern European developer), providing surprisingly good graphics and large numbers of characters onscreen at the same time without the need for overpowered hardware. Add in the always fun Havok ragdoll physics engine to create some painful contortions as enemies are blown back by your powerful blasts, and you've got the makings of a great back-to-basics shooter.

Each time you kill an enemy, they will leave behind their soul, represented by a glowing green glob. If you pick it up, you will gain only one measly point of health Ц which means you'll need to dish out some serious death if you want to stay healthy. Once you collect a certain number of souls, you will be able to activate a cool bullet-time mode where the screen goes black and white, time slows down and you can kill enemies (who will stand out in bright orange) with only a single hit.

You will also be able to unlock Black Tarot cards which give you special powerups like increased speed or making enemies move sluggishly. You will also be able to combine cards to make your own super powerup.

Naturally for a game like this, multiplayer will be included but it is not yet known how many players will be supported over Xbox Live or what gamemodes we will get. Expect the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag, and hope they will include the other gamemodes from the PC version, including Voosh (every player starts with the same weapon which changes randomly), The Light Bearer (there is only a single quad damage powerup that you can grab; if you die another player can pick it up) and the interesting УPeople Can FlyФ mode where you're in a giant cylinder armed with rocket launchers and can only kill people who are in the air. Regardless, you can be sure multiplayer will be violently fast-paced with each player blasting each other with their ridiculously powerful weapons. Sounds like fun!