Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 3

Genre: Action / Comedy

Number of Players: 1 to 4
Support: 1080p, Leaderboard

Sometimes you just want to destroy things in gaming. Actually, I guess that’s true in most cases, but there have been quite a few more titles getting released where causing grievous bodily harm to your character, vehicle, and everything around you has been the center point. We don’t always want to save the town or world, sometimes we just want to destroy it, and while PAIN won’t let you dish out punishment on the entire planet, at least having a city to make a disaster in becomes entertaining.

PAIN would be a game that could be considered an offshoot of Jackass. The idea is a pretty simple one, and your character is armed with a giant slingshot. But, you won’t be loading up rocks or flaming barrels my friends, but instead the ammunition is you. The goal is to determine the perfect trajectory, then launch yourself into the air, taking out people, windows, signs, and just about anything else that you can think of. Okay, maybe not buildings because brick, mortar and steel stand up relatively well against the human body, but everything else is your target.

There is a bit more than just flying through the air however, and you can perform some stylish moves in the air to help you earn more points. The real goal, at least in PAINdamonium, is to build up points and this is done by not only how you look in the air, but linking together your destructive potential. Hitting a train is nice, but hitting it, then bouncing off and smashing a window or hitting the giant bowling ball which will cause it to come tumbling to the ground adds up more points. You can control your trajectory in the air as well which will help you to hit some of those more precarious sections and once you’ve hit the ground, you can keep the combo going for a brief time to build up even more points. You can also replay your spectacular crashes and move the camera around to get a better view of the path of destruction that you’ve carved.

PAINdemonium is only one of the game offered though, and while each of the other games found in PAIN is set in the same area, at least presently, there are some other options. Spank the Monkey isn’t that certain thing that you were warned would make you blind, but instead it’s you against monkeys. Some people love them, but it seems game developers hate them, and you’re goal is to take them out, and pretty much anything else that you can. Fun with Explosives will have you tossing the explosive crates found in the game in hopes of creating more damage and HORSE . . . we’ve all played this, and its just PAIN’s version of it. There is also the Mime Toss where you can throw those annoying mime across the screen, and bowling, done PAIN style of course. The game will also award you with medals based on score, destruction, and a number of other things that I’m sure will be expanded on with future updates, and there’s also a multiplayer mode.

PAIN is fun, at least for a while, but it does lack variety. It’s really just the same idea over and over again, and without having other levels to play it, it can make the game slowly start to become very tedious and boring. There’s no option to save replays, at least not presently, and that’s something that gamers certainly want to have added into the title. Also, the ability to actually move the location of the catapult would be a nice touch, but then again, so would some new levels.

The strong point however is found with the ragdoll physics and PAIN displays these marvelously. Smashing, crashing, and overall ravaging the playing field is fun, but seeing your character twist into near impossible positions is just as much fun, if not more. PAIN also keeps the destruction present, at least until you decide to reset it, so the game really can handle a great amount of detail. The approach is more of a cartoon style, and it should be in order to avoid those who think it might be fun to try in the real world from doing so. I know; we live in an age where people should know better, but that’s not always the case, and we know what happens when the media gets even the vaguest idea that some random act of violence might have been caused by a video game.

PAIN is a decent game, but not one that managed to keep my interest for too terribly long. It really needs more variety, and not just the addition of one stage. Even putting a mission mode in would be a nice way to keep things more interesting because just earning points grows old after a while, especially with a title like this. Hopefully the planned updates will bring more spice to this title because right now, I did feel the PAIN . . . . just not for very long.

-mike-