Painkiller: Battle out of Hell

"Mostly good, with one or two let-downs..."

Since BOOH is an expansion, the only people who are going to buy it are the ones who played and enjoyed Painkiller. I'm one of these people, and I enjoyed both games (PK especially) so much that I've written walkthroughs for both the original and the expansion.

Having now played both games to death and back, it's clear to me that BOOH, while definitely fun, is not quite as good as PK. This is probably because game developers do tend to rush out expansions while they think they can still cash in on the success of an original.

Gamers have to be given some new things in an expansion, and BOOH turns out ten completely new levels (the manual mentions a Galleon level but I'm buggered if I've ever found it), two new weapons (each with two modes of fire), quite a few new enemies, and ten new tarot cards. Of the ten levels, two contain big, bad bosses and the other eight are typical hunt-and-kill minion-fests. Most of the eight non-boss levels are good enough, but a couple are a bit piffle. These are the main novelties that BOOH offers, but are they enough to make people fall in love with PK all over again?

Well, PK doesn't need an expansion to remind people of how good it is. It wasn't complicated but it was damned fun (literally). An expansion to such a game has to make sure it at least retains the quality and consistency set by its predecessor. And BOOH doesn't quite make it, though it comes very close.

BOOH starts off promisingly in a spooky Orphanage level, populated with demonic kids, weird swamp mutants, possessed toys, ghosts, and an axe-wielding monstrosity. This level reminded me a lot of the Shalebridge Cradle from Thief 3, which can only be a good thing (play it, please!). The Orphanage is a small but decent introduction into BOOH.

The second level, Loony Park, really cranks up the sinister aspect, with clowns and piles of popcorn and puppets and spike traps and even a rollercoaster ride. The design of this little level is brilliant, but it's also here where things start to go a bit wrong. To get the tarot card for this level (assuming you're collecting them in order) is a right bastard, and unless you're damn good or are using a careful walkthrough, you'll have trouble getting it.

But you put that aside, hoping that you can get it later, and continue to the Lab. This level is the worst in the game - nowhere in PK was there a level as ugly and crappy as this. It's not fun and neither is getting the card, which is again a pain.

The first 'boss' level is up next, and it carries on the PK tradition of needing a special strategy before you're able to finish it off. This method is less than obvious, and you'll spend a lot of time just running about trying random things before accidentally finding the correct way. There are two more such bosses in the game, but not once are you asked to apply logic or sense towards taking them down.

The next level is street after post-apocalyptic street of zombies and cars; the one after that is a Call Of Duty-esque trek through the war-torn streets of Leningrad; the next one is the well-designed Colloseum level, albeit with a bug which keeps you from getting the card until you manage to download an unfeasibly large patch in order to fix the entire level; and the eighth and ninth are set in mines full of carts and pits.

The final boss - King Alastor - can be dropped in under one minute, and that includes the thirty seconds you have to spend actually getting to him. And your reward for beating him with all ten cards collected - presuming you bothered downloading that 300MB patch - is having to play all the levels again on Trauma difficulty. This was OK in Painkiller, since doing so would unlock the secret Forest level, another card, and the secret ending to the game. All you get for completing BOOH on Trauma is a headache. Oh, and a crappy little pseudo level where you have to collect the souls of the programmers while barely hanging on to the will to live. They even have the cheek to put you through the same ending you watched on Nightmare - all three hours of it.

As for the other new things: the weapons are OK (the SMG being the best) but nothing brilliant, and ten levels is too few in which to really appreciate them. They do nothing that PK's weapons couldn't already do, and better. The monsters are varied - some are great and others are boring as hell. Most are interesting enough for a while, my favourites being the pinokios and the preachers. The bosses are meh - instead of being bigger and more impressive than PK's enormities, they're smaller and less impressive.

The tarot cards were interesting and worth working for in PK, but BOOH's ones aren't. Having collected all ten I still find myself sticking with the same five I went through PK's Trauma levels with - the BOOH cards are just too gimmicky and add-on-ish. Another major challenge in PK was finding and reaching all the secrets, even if you didn't need to for the cards: BOOH's secrets are almost uniformly easy, and off the top of my head I can think of only one (Dead City) which gave me big trouble. Easy secrets are less fun, not more fun.

So:

New levels,weapons and enemies - PASS (B+ / A-)
New tarot cards, bosses, secrets and other stuff - FAIL - (D+ / C-)

In the end, what makes BOOH worth playing is the fact that you loved Painkiller. Although I've mostly criticised BOOH, you will definitely enjoy it if you give it a try. But the expansion improves on Painkiller in no way, and in fact takes one or two steps back in several areas. With better level design and more thought put into it, it could have been great: as it is, it's worth buying just to prolong the PK experience.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/07, Updated 08/07/07