Ask anyone what they thought was the funniest part of a movie and almost everyone will say,
“remember the time that guy got kicked between his legs? That was hilarious!”. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of humour involving nut-kicking, not just because it has been done to death about a billion-zillion times in every conceivable teeny-bopper comedy, but because writers most often decide to throw in scenes involving nut-kicking when they completely run out of ideas — a desperate attempt to get laughs if you will. PAIN is to video gaming what
nut-kicking is to comedy. Funny in the beginning and stale after a few hours. On the other hand, if you’re a hardcore fan of slapstick comedy, or like me, of random absurdness, you will simply love PAIN — for a while at least.
PAIN first appeared as a DLC on the US Playstation store in November 2007 and on the EU Playstation store in March ’08. It was the most popular download on the Playstation store for a long time. The original version had just one playable level, a couple of characters, three major game modes and a couple of mini-games. Further DLC was constantly added to the online store in the form of levels, characters, game modes and more. The game was finally released on BD in June 2009, with the version containing the original version of the game plus all the major DLC. I think it’s fair to say that the BD version of the game is the best version, thanks to the packaging of all the content. Subsequent patches to the game have added even more content, with the most recent 1.3 patch weighing in at a massive 400-odd MB.
My first impression of PAIN was that it was merely a tech demo for the almost ubiquitous ‘Havok’ physics engine. Then my opinion changed. I then believed that it was a glorified tech demo. It wasn’t until substantial experimentation with every aspect of PAIN that I slowly began taking it seriously as a party
video game. Let me assure you, if you have a copy of PAIN, you will undoubtedly want to show it off to anyone who is even remotely interested in video games or humour. Its easy pick-up-and-play gameplay is perfect for some quick-fire multiplayer. Hell, even its single player modes are great to play as a group. The absurdity of PAIN’s actual gameplay is evident in the names of its various game modes. In single player, you’ve got ‘Paindemonium’, where the only objective is causing maximum damage to the environment and maximum pain to your character, then you’ve got ‘Spank the Monkey’, where the objective is to rid the city streets of the invading primate army, ‘Mime Toss’, a self-explanatory game mode where you’ve got to toss mimes into window panes, and lots more including ‘Touchmounds’, ‘Cratetastic’, ‘Abusement Park’, ‘Clown Toss’ and ‘Hot n Cold’. Most of the game modes are a lot of fun, and there’s enough here to appeal to a wide variety of sadistic gamers. Multiplayer modes include ‘Horse’, where you can challenge your friends to hit the same spot as you, and upon their failure will earn them letters which ultimately spell ‘H-O-R-S-E’. Silliness, check. Fun, check. ‘Pain Bowling’ is another brilliant game mode and my personal favourite. ‘Pain Darts’, ‘Fortress’, ‘Trauma’ and ‘Call da Shot’ complete the list of multiplayer modes. The BD version also adds two new environments in the form of ‘Movie Studio’ and ‘Abusement Park’ with enough unique objects to smash and grab. The maps look and feel quite different from one another, so if you’ve mastered one, you can just move on to the next environment.
The game controls the way you expect it to, but they lack polish. The control scheme isn’t broken, but there’s a lot of button combinations to be memorised, and you most certainly will not remember them if you play the game once or twice a month, which is exactly what you will be doing. Graphics are average at best, but the music (at least the title theme) is catchy. Sound effects in-game are
exactly what you would expect, conveying painfulness, agony and other similar emotions very convincingly. The game’s various character models are distinctly funny-looking and you can feel each of their weights when controlling them mid-air (the Havok engine at work again).
Verdict
It’s quite obvious that developer Idol Minds wanted to make PAIN the most fun party game ever, and I think it’s fair to say that they have succeeded reasonably well. It’s obviously not for everyone, but the variety alone should keep fans of this kind of humour happy during extended drinking sessions. Just don’t expect to be playing this game by yourself for long periods of time.
— videep@gmailcom