Painkiller: Battle out of Hell

"…And This Time, It’s Personal"

Battle Out of Hell, Painkiller's first expansion, picks up right where the original game left off. Lucifer has been killed at the hands of main character Daniel, which as it turns out, was just part of a brilliantly orchestrated plan by his second in command, Alastor. Alastor's thinking was that Lucifer was wasting too much time planning and preparing for his assault on Heaven, so he decided the time had come to overthrow the Lord of Darkness. With Daniels help, Alastor is free to take up the mantle of King of Hell and proceed with his plans of cosmic domination.

Regardless of this, Daniel's original mission to stop Lucifer is complete and he is offered passage into Heaven. But he's still in a bit of a bind because he was directly responsible for Alastor's rise to power and he knows it's only a matter of time before Alastor assaults Heaven itself. With that in mind, he declines the offer and sets off to kill the King of Hell one more time.

Not much has changed with Battle Out of Hell. Players are tossed into a series of levels, given a bunch of guns and forced to kill wave after wave of enemies until moving on. Though there have been a couple of new additions, completely new enemies and levels, the game is functionally identical to Painkiller. While that alone should have made Battle Out of Hell a worthy purchase, it's the wildly varying level of quality that makes this expansion one to avoid.

But first things first; Battle Out of Hell is a rather paltry expansion at best, what with a mere ten levels (and a few of these are only playable on the highest difficulty level) and an almost complete absence of bosses. Though they weren't exactly revolutionary in the base game, they were usually frantic and fairly fun. Their exclusion feels like a core component of Painkiller's identity has been cut out of the equation.

Level design was a highlight of Painkiller, but Battle Out of Hell falls back on some very lackluster setups and areas which adversely affect the games fun factor. Some of the most unimaginative of these include a science lab and a generic zombie filled city. However the first two levels are some of the best in both the expansion and the original game and highlight the developer's ability to create fun and highly atmospheric areas. The best in the game is a demonic theme park with all sorts of wicked looking rides. This level ends with a ride on one of the most insane rollercoasters ever created and players will be blasting enemies all along the way.

Unfortunately there are more sour notes than positve ones in the game. Platforming is more prevalent in the expansion and these sections are much more irritating than they were in Painkiller. These are almost always set up so that failure ends in instant death or a huge chunk of depleted health. The worst area in the game is the Colloseum (obviously the developers didn't spellcheck their work either…) which makes players go through an extended gauntlet of traps and instant death jumps. Oh, when will developers learn?

Another issue is the varying level of difficulty, which often jumps between breezy to maddeningly difficult. This is especially apparent in the Leningrad level, where players will suddenly be thrust into skirmishes with dozens of enemies in open streets and multiple tanks. After completing this level, the difficultly level drops back down considerably but there are several other areas where the difficulty spikes up for no apparent reason.

Battle Out of Hell also makes use of an entirely new enemy set. The new enemies are specifically tailored to a single level and work with the theme of the level. For instance the theme park is filled with evil clowns, marionettes and monsters made out of popcorn (which is a hell of a lot freakier than it sounds). In the Orphanage there are a lot of uniformed children and evil dolls. The Leningrad level is filled with Russian and German soldiers as well as demolition men and officers.

One of the most common complaints with Painkiller was its relatively small and unimaginative pool of weapons. Two new weapons have been introduced, each with wildly different alternate firing modes. The first of these is a bit familiar and is called the Boltgun. The Boltgun fires out five metal stakes, sort of like a jacked up version of the Stakegun. It also has a scope, allowing for sniping (a feature I often wished for while playing Painkiller). Its alt-fire is called the Heater and shoots out ten bouncing bombs that explode on contact with an enemy or the player. The second weapon is a machinegun/flamethrower combination. The machine gun is surprisingly powerful and accurate but its drawback is a burst firing mode. The flamethrower (another thing I wanted in Painkiller) is a delightful tool that sets enemies ablaze, slowly leeching their health.

While the actual gameplay retains the same philosophy as the first game, if not the same level of quality, People Can Fly have made some significant changes in regards to the technical aspects of the game. All of the returning characters have been updated with entirely new looks, the most apparent of which are Alastor and Eve, who now wears a bra (apparently just having her hair cover her breasts was too racy). The game has also received a minor update for things like textures, but the most obvious is the new heat shimmer effect for the flamethrower, which looks awesome. Other things haven't changed so much. The cutscenes still look terrible and the actors animations and models are horribly wooden. And it doesn't look like People Can Fly put any more effort into lipsynching than they did the last time. On another note, loading times have increased significantly and you can spend up to a minute staring at a boring screen while waiting for a level to load.

Audio has also been changed. Whereas the first game used a lot of heavy metal music during levels, Battle Out of Hell has completely done away with that. Instead a more level specific soundtrack has been adopted. For instance, in the Leningrad level players will hear a Russian choir singing instead of some slick guitar riff. It's a change which people will regard largely based on personal preference. I for one enjoyed the constant wailing guitars. On the other hand, voice acting remains the same in that it is completely awful and painfully stilted.

THE VERDICT
If Battle Out of Hell was judged solely on the merits of its first two levels it would be an excellent expansion. Indeed, if People Can Fly had kept up that momentum this expansion would probably have eclipsed the base game itself. Unfortunately after those first levels the overall quality of the game degrades very quickly and is never reestablished. In the end there's too much platforming, too much loading, too little content and not enough quality material to make this anything but an expansion for the hardcore. If all you want is more mindless shooting action, Battle Out of Hell will deliver but only in the most basic of ways.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/08/09

Game Release: Painkiller: Battle out of Hell (US, 12/01/04)