I just finished Painkiller Hell and Damnation and since I don't see very many posts (like 2 at the time of this post) I decided to give my thoughts.
Right away, I will say I did enjoy the game immensely. Killing dudes is always satisfying and dude killing is in no short order in Painkiller HD. However, there is one thing that some may not like, and that is the fact you are essentially going from "monster arena" to another. What I mean is, you will enter a room, the door will close behind you and will not open again until you kill everything in the way. I didn't mind this too much because it's all about dude killing, but some will really dislike the fact that it's not more open and I wouldn't blame them.
The level design is good but it is quite liner, and in some places you will be enter the same room twice for progression but not very often. But, because I have the directional ability of gold fish I did find my self lost a few times trying to find the room exit. This is mostly because the way point arrow showing you where the ending is, kind of sucks. Also, because of the whole monster arena thing I mentioned above, if you do not kill every dude the next door wont open. So, if there is one single guy running around trying to get to you while you are running around trying to get to him in the opposite direction, you can expect some parts to drag on. (True story, took almost 10 minutes for us to meet up, in which I removed his head with a saw blade for wasting my time.)
Enemy design is well done, but they are not super varied. I think there is maybe 7ish different enemies not counting bosses nor re-colorizing. On the topic of boss, they where actually a disappointment for me. The first big baddie (not the one in the quick look since he wasn't a boss technically) you have to kill decided to fuck off to the top right corner of the map and stay there the whole fight. Conveniently, allowing me to shoot him in the face from a distance until he died, and without him giving so much as a single shit about me. I laughed and sighed at the same time.
The story, well there is a story but it's not something to concern yourself with (hint: it's bad).
The weapons, the big one for this type of game. They are great, some old guns from the first Painkiller make their return including my all time favorite, the gun that shoots shurikens and lightning and some new ones. Aside from the ones from the quick look, you have a burst fire sub machine gun that also doubles as a flame thrower, a rocket launcher that also doubles as a chain gun, and a gun that has a scope and shoots out 6 stakes (the vampire killing kind not the meaty one) at once. That thing is pretty ridiculous.
There is online play, including I believe co-op campaign but I haven't tried any of it so I cannot speak for it.
My biggest complaint is that it's short, as in 4 chapters and all but the first chapter only having 3 levels which clocks in at around 5 hours. Now of course, this will vary from person to person if this a bad thing or not. It really depends on if $20 for 5 hours of game play is money well spent. Of course, there is online play, so that could extend your enjoyment. Along with multiple layers of difficulty, one of which you cannot unlock until you beaten the game. Also, an exceptional amount of achievements and collectables if you like doing that. So to say there is no replayability would be wrong, but I am sadly not one to replay through a game to collect stuff. So for me, I probably won't be playing it through a second time but others might.
Final thoughts, if you liked the original Painkiller definitely check it out, however, if you did not Hell and Damnation won't change your opinion as it's more of the same. If you are on the fence and can spare the $20 and don't mind the length, absolutely go for it. But, if you don't believe 5 hours of game is worth $20 then I would say wait until it goes on sale or until steam's holiday sale where it will probably be like $2.
Thanks for reading.
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