"This did Doom better than Doom did SoD"

For fans of old school FPSs this game is a must buy. You find yourself in halfway between Hell and Heaven. Those 'above' say you weren't pure in your life and killing Lucifer's generals would make you worthy to enter Heaven and see your long-dead girlfriend. Simple story, awesome gameplay. As you battle your way, getting ever closer to Hell's gates you fight horde after horde of Hell's minions

Gameplay:
This is your typical first-person shooter. Shoot, strafe, and jump your way to victory. Unique weapons add to the flavor. I particularily enjoyes the configurations provided by the weapons. Between primary and secondary fire, you come out with balanced weapons that work up close and devastate from afar. The addition of "demon morphing" adds a kick to the fun. If you're a fan of Cowboy Bebop, just think of going into a red-eye franzy.
Add in a card system where you can add attributes to your character and you will find yourself a non-stop killing machine.
The save system is very nice, offering a plethora of auto-saves before any large horde. It also has the standard quick save and manual saves for backup fulfillment.

Graphics:
This game is absolutely stunning. The level designers are absolute genii. There are some levels, the last boss battle especially, that literally have you running around just trying to get a glimpse of everything they have constructed.
It is, therefore, very graphic intesive. I had some slowdowns on my system at 1024x780 and had to lower my resolution to 800x600. However, with all the settings turned on, the way the game utilizes the anti-aliasing on my FX5200 I was hard pressed to tell the difference in resolutions.
They Pain 3d engine has some stunning physics models to boot. The ragdoll physics in one of its crowning achievements. Every enemy and item in the game has a center of gravity, and that center is exactly where you would expect it to be. There is nothing better than vaulting an enemy into the air with a well placed blast from your shotgun.
The monster models are spectacular and the rendering of the bosses will make your jaw drop. In a word, they are big.

Sound & Music:
The sound effects are good, both direct and ambient. Nothing is repeated that needs to be repeated and there was never a time when I wanted to take off my headphones for fear of boring my ears. The game makes good use of any EAX hardware you might have, adding that extra environmental oomph to your gameplay.
The Music is very good. I prefer the ambient music, but you will be hard pressed to hear it over the ever persistant battle music. However, my only gripe is that the battle music gets tedious after a bit. It serves a purpose letting you know monsters are about and for that it's alright. It's just not my kind of music so it grates on my nerves after a bit.

Overall
Contrary to the caps-lock induced speil of the games many flaws below, all I have to say is if you don't have a good gaming rig, this thing will be a pain. The only bugs I found had me, at the worst part, restart the level. The game crashed to desktop once but that was do to me running too many programs in the background. The game is fun on normal difficulty and actually challenging on hard. The ability to unlock cards, and extra levels as you go up in difficulty adds replayabilty so you won't find yourself lacking a replay. All in all a worthy buy that I highly endorse.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/04