Rock, Paper, Shotgun

‘Hell and Damnation’ is the kind of exclamation that I imagine might escape the rarely unpursed lips of a country vicar as he stubs his toe on the rector’s boot-scraper when arriving for afternoon tea. Tacked on the end of Painkiller’s colon, it’s probably not intended to sound as quaint as all that but rather to convey the gurgling, catarrh-trembling roar of a heavy metalist. John has already played the opening levels of this remake of the original kill ‘em up, which comes out on Halloween. The Halloween release, so close to Doom 3: BFG Edition, is an altogether correct confluence of events as Painkiller always felt much Doomier than Doom 3. The video below contains loud music and giant boss monsters.

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Back in the old days, when only 12 people read RPS, each and every one of them hated me to the core because I said I didn’t think the original Painkiller was a very good videogame. I wonder what happens when I say that now? I think we can all agree that these long years of expansion packs and expandydandelions haven’t exactly done great favours for ‘the brand’, though. Looks like this may be about to change, as the Nordic Games-published/funded Painkiller: Hell & Damnation has the auspices of a high-budget reboot. Polish (and thus not Nordic, confusingly) devs The Farm 51 perhaps don’t have too much known heritage behind them – Necrovision primarily, although apparently collaborated on The Witcher and Two Worlds II. They’re getting to play with the Unreal 3 engine for this, and if these screenies are legit rather than the shot of the bull this could be a bit of a treat for those who crave high-speed, high-gloss demon-slaying.

Read on for some more pics, and a comment from a man with the best name in the world.
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Attention, fans of shooting things again and again: the undying Painkiller is to receive a fourth follow-up, Redemption. It’s due next week, which means it is perhaps unwisely going head-to-head with the latest game from original Painkiller creators People Can Fly. That’ll be Bulletstorm, which we might have mentioned here and there a couple of times. Both games are due out next week.

Redemption was formerly a mod, now transformed by Polish devs Eggtooth into a $5 expandydandydandelionalone.
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God, Painkiller was rubbish. Really, really awful. Having the hell marketed out of it made it briefly popular with pro-gaming types, though – I’ve even had the curious pleasure of being beaten soundly at it by Fatal1ty, though unfortunately I got shouted at by his mate/PR/bodyguard-guy for daring to touch his mouse.

Anyway, Painkiller: Overdose, the inevitable sequel, is on its way soon, and here’s the demo to prove it. Yes, it was released several days back. No, I wasn’t paying attention, probably because it’s been released so close to a great number of interesting first-person shooters, making this demo a little like a man in the street offering you a shrivelled sausage on a stick when you’re walking down a road full of gourmet restaurants. As a point of principle I’m not touching this one in my own time (though I’ll do it for money, of course), so please, feel free to be my foodtasters and confirm my suspicion that this dish is riddled with poisons.