Reviewed: October 2, 2008
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer
Idol Minds
Released: September 11, 2008
Genre: Action
Players: 1-4
Online: 2-4
7
8
8
7
7.8
Supported Features:
Last year I became addicted to pain. No, I wasn’t cutting myself or slamming my fingers in the car door or throwing myself in front of traffic, but I was launching myself from a giant catapult into several sprawling blocks of chaos and physics-driven mayhem in one of Sony’s most original downloadable titles. Of course I am referring to PAIN. A game so simple in concept, elegant in design, and ever so addicting that it was one of the few games I was still actively playing when the first major expansion pack hit a few weeks ago.
PAIN is a marketing person’s dream. For the low cost of $10 you can start your addiction, and then feed your cravings for saucy new characters at $1 a pop. It won’t take long before you have spent more on downloadable content than the core game. This could be the future of gaming or at least game delivery.
Now, Sony is once again prying open your virtual wallet for $6 to expand your PAIN experience with more than just a few new characters. After a year of playing in the city I am sure you were all as tired of that level as I, having explored every last nook and cranny. With PAIN: Amusement Park you can now launch your growing library of colorful characters into a whole new realm of pain.
PAIN: Amusement Park doesn’t stray from its core as a puzzle game masking as a violent action title, even if all the violence is self-inflicted. The premise is simple. You are presented with a large indoor amusement park with all sorts of rides, shops, and other obstacles waiting for you to smash into. Instead of a slingshot, this time your character is placed in broken park ride that you can adjust before firing your character into the park. What happens after that is up to some crazy physics and some clever control tweaks you can impose on your ragdoll character.
Once your human projectile is airborne you can perform all sorts of poses as you arc into the park. You can also, to a small degree, steer your person toward a specific target and even cling to the environment. Nothing is more satisfying that grabbing onto the steel rails of the rollercoaster and hanging there waiting to get hit and launched into a new area of the park.
Once you collide with something Havok takes over and you will start to bounce around, ricocheting off one object and into another. The goal is to keep going and destroying as much property as possible while inflicting as much bodily harm on yourself (and others) as you can. As long as your body is in motion you will slowly fill up the OUCH meter. You can also shake the SIXAXIS controller to ignite the OUCH meter for even more power. You can then use this OUCH power to nudge your flailing body around the level and into more objects. It’s actually a bit disturbing to see a broken body twitching around the park, trying to nudge their way to an exploding teddy bear.
But it gets better. Upon impact with most objects you can grab on using the D-pad. In the new Clown Toss game you can grab a clown and carry them in flight then launch them into exploding barrels. You can also cling to the whirling Tilt-a-Hurl to launch yourself in a new direction or grab onto any ride for that matter for humorous and painful results.
The amusement park is more compact that the city from the original game. There is a lot more activity going on so it was surprising that there was much less to actually do. Once you’ve interacted with the various rides, flipped the various ride switches, and found the secret air vents that shoot you across the park there is very little sense of exploration or discovery.
So, launching and doing damage is only so much fun for so long. Well, actually, I’m not sure I would ever get tired of playing the default game mode (Abusement Park) where you simply launch and re-launch yourself trying to get the highest damage combo and score. You can always reset the environment to start with a fresh park. But other gamers might not be as easily amused for long periods as I am, so thankfully, Idol Minds has included numerous, and incredibly fun alternative game modes for single and multiple players as well as a variety of challenges that are scored and ranked with bronze, silver, gold, and platinum medals. Scores are also tracked on the PS Network leaderboards and you can now earn Trophies as well.
HOT-n-COLD is a great single player game that scatters hundreds of teddy bears all over the park. You are looking for only one of them and in order to find them you have to launch yourself into as many others as you can. Each exploding bear will indicate if you are getting hotter (closer) or colder (further) from the one bear you are seeking. And with only limited shots, you need to hit as many bears in as many sections of the park as possible with each shot.
Trauma is the new multiplayer game that replaces HORSE from the original PAIN. The lead player launches and hits a target object then racks up as much damage as they can. All the other players must then hit that same target object then score more than the lead player. It’s a weird take on the game since you are now trying to spell the word rather than avoid getting letters.
Call the Shot is another multiplayer game that challenges gamers to pick 2-4 objects then hit them in a single launch. The more difficult the combo the more points you can earn. Fun with Explosives is back and simple has you launching into the park trying to detonate as many explosives as you can in a single launch. Clown Toss is some great payback for those (like me) who are totally freaked out by clowns. It is slightly different and a lot tougher than the Mime Toss in the original game. You must now launch and pick up a clown who is bouncing up and down on a pogo stick. This took me several practice shots just to be able to connect and grab the clown. Then you fly through the air and fling the clown into as many exploding barrels as you can while trying to avoid hitting those same barrels with your own body.
The best thing about PAIN, whether you are playing in the city or the park is that, thanks to Havok, no two launches are, or ever will be, the same. This keeps the game fresh and entertaining for countless hours, and those hours will tick by totally unnoticed by all who are captivated by the engaging and wickedly fun gameplay.
The visuals in PAIN: Amusement Park are a lot more colorful and animated than the original city level. Expect lots of moving rides, giant characters walking around the park, people, and a lot more things to do and interact with.
The characters are all modeled with long limbs that flail around wildly unless you are invoking one of the many in-flight poses. Their crash and injury animations are brutally painful but thankfully blood free. All of the great names and icons for the various injuries are back and will combo along the bottom of the screen as they register.
A great replay camera allows you to view the chaos from any vantage point, zoom in, and pan around, and study the carnage. I only wish there was a system in place to save those replays and share them online, or as part of the leaderboard so you could see how some of these people are getting these high scores.
Most of the game is played with the cries and screams of your human ammo as they flail through the sky, followed by oomph’s and grunts and groans when they hit and nudge around. It’s great fun if you are in the room but apparently very annoying for anyone listening to it from elsewhere. Each character has their own signature lines and screams, which is part of the appeal in purchasing new characters.
The amusement park is much busier than the city, which means a lot more sounds. All of the rides make unique noises and there are always the screams of the people riding them. All of this rises above the carnival-style theme music and PA announcements that create an awesome theme park ambience. And everything is very 3D thanks to a THX Dolby Digital surround mix.
PAIN was a game that I played, and have been playing periodically for nearly a year. It is still a requested favorite when people cover over to play multiplayer. It’s simple and doesn’t require too much thought or time investment. After downloading the Amusement Park expansion I dove right in and played for about two straight hours, but unlike the original, I wasn’t compelled to keep playing. It seemed I had done everything there was to do and explored the park thoroughly.
But PAIN isn’t a traditional game with an ending. It’s an arcade game where you compete for high scores, rise on the leaderboards, and challenge others in any of the clever multiplayer modes. New to the Amusement Park add-on is an online multiplayer mode as well as the five core modes, and you always have the city to go back to if you want to toss a mime or do some street bowling.
Sony continues to offer plenty of aftermarket material including some awesome new characters at $.99 cents a pop…and worth every penny if for no other reason than to break up the repetitive post-launch cries and screams. The male characters are a bit weak, but the female characters offer some graphics, animations, and vocal taunts that blur the lines of the Teen and Mature rating.
I loved PAIN and I had such high hopes for PAIN: Amusement Park. It’s not a bad expansion but it could have been better. I found the park to be too small and compact. It was way too easy to explore the entire park in just a few hours leaving me with nothing to do but exploit the marvelous physics engine and try to find the unexpected.
At the end of the day you just have to ask yourself how much PAIN you can stand. If you loved the original game then $6 is a drop in the bucket for as much new fun as you will have in this expansion. I’ve spent more than $6 just on new characters in the past year. There is plenty here to enjoy, but as always, PAIN is an experience that is best shared with friends, so get a group together and head to the most painful place on the PS3 - the PAIN: Amusement Park.