Pain

Since its launch, the PS3’s Playstation store has offered some great content, with everything from move trailers, game add-ons, demos, and themes for players to download and enjoy. One of the pay-to-download games available at the moment is Pain, which is a mixed bag to play. While it offers plenty of laughs and truly irrelevant gameplay, it tends to wear itself out fairly quickly, so in the end you’re left wishing you could get your money back.

The beauty of Pain is that it has only one concept – destruction. You’re given a view of a bustling city, and your one goal is to cause carnage and demolition. But rather than hand you a battle tank or a warehouse of grenades, the game gives you…a giant slingshot. And

what’s your ammo? Nothing more than a very willing human being! So, all you have to do in Pain is launch your human (you start off with Jarvis) at various areas of the city, and watch in glee as he bounces off every item with a sickening crunch and plenty of vocal protests. As soon as you launch your character into the air, the game’s physics engine kicks in, with your character smashing into glass, lamp posts, and mailboxes, which in turn react differently to being hit. Glass smashes and crumbles to the sidewalk, signboards topple over and lay on the street, and cars swerve and smash into each other as you happily fire your poor human into the wild blue yonder.

Once you launch your character though, things aren’t quite over. Before your character hits something, you can ‘drift’ them in any direction using the left analog stick, so you can pin-point exactly which object you’d like to smash into. You can also grab explosive crates or other objects, to further manipulate your crash. There is also an option to pull off a couple of ‘style moves’ by holding down either L1 or L2 and one of the face buttons. Sadly though, you need to hold a move for 3 seconds in order for the game to score you, so you’re probably limited to doing 2 moves before you splatter onto a building. Your other saving grace in racking up big points is your ‘Oooh’ factor. As you smash into things, you build up you ‘Oooh bar’, and the more pain and destruction you cause, the faster it fills up. You can then use this bar to pull and poke your character in any direction, so you can inch them closer towards an explosive crate, or better yet, onto incoming traffic. There’s also ‘Super Oooh’, which you get by shaking your controller around – this is useful for a good shove into a fuel tank or to hitch a ride with a train as it drags you along the tracks – sweet!

To add some variety, the game offers a couple of different modes in single player. There’s

the ‘paindemonium’ mode, where your objective is to hit as many targets as possible while racking up big points. The ‘mime toss’ mode has you grabbing an annoying mime and throwing him at several glass panes, with the aim of destroying the panes in the shortest time possible. The ‘spank the monkey’ mode has you launching your character at monkeys that pop up around the level. This mode gets increasingly difficult as you progress, since you will often be tasked with hitting more than one monkey in a single launch. However this mode tends to be the most boring, and you’re limited to only hitting the monkeys and not anything else in the level.

In addition to the singleplayer mode, the game does offer a multiplayer option, which again builds on the game’s idea of ‘destroy everything in sight’. The ‘H-O-R-S-E’ mode has you launching your player into the air, while a second player then attempts to hit everything your character has hit, in the bid to rack up a higher score. There is also a bowling mode, and a level where you have to smash into as many explosive crates as you can. The biggest downfall of the multiplayer mode is that it doesn’t offer any online modes – the only online aspect is a leaderboard and the game’s blog. The game would have done much better if it had online playability, but it’s a feature the developers decided to leave out in the end.

Because the game lacks a multiplayer option, gamers will soon tire of the constant repetitiveness. Given that there is only one level available, the game grows old fairly quickly. You

can unlock an alternate configuration, but again it’s the same hazards and the same level, so it’s really not a new playground. Though you start off with Jarvis, you can unlock his other costumes, and in time a second character. But this seems ridiculously limited, as the additional characters can only become available by buying them through the Playstation Store. The lack of content available by default will frustrate gamers who have shelled out the $10 for this game. Another annoying thing is that once you’ve downloaded the game, everything is locked until you finish the tutorial – a handy point that they fail to mention anywhere on the game’s website.

Despite its short play time, Pain does have some shining moments. The game’s physics engine is absolutely spot on, delivering every crushing blow and explosion in fantastic detail. Your character buckles, twists, bends, and spins around as you hit objects or blow yourself up. Every crunch and bone-breaking smash is heard as well, thanks to the game’s great sound effects. The graphics are crisp and well animated, and every explosion is pulled off flawlessly.

It’s a shame that Pain’s glory is so short-lived, as this game had potential to be a truly fun distraction for gamers. The lack of levels and unlockable content will make players feel that this game is more of a rip-off than a genuine purchase. Still, if you’re looking for a fun game with mindless modes of destruction, Pain is the game for you.