Painkiller: Hell & Damnation

Hell & Damnation events unfold after the addition of Painkiller: Overdose , thereby ignoring the events of Resurrection , Redemption and Recurring Evil . Daniel Garner, who went through a meat grinder in the fight against the army of Lucifer, was deceived by the forces of Paradise and Hell and remained in Purgatory, without any opportunity to get out of there and finally losing hope of seeing his wife Catherine again. Once, when Daniel sits in a cemetery, the Reaper himself suddenly comes to him and offers him a deal: if Daniel collects 7 thousand souls for him, the Reaper will allow him to go to Paradise, to his wife. Daniel doubts the deal, but agrees when the Reaper tells him that he is too dangerous for Purgatory. The reaper leaves him a special weapon - “Soul Catcher” ( English Soulcatcher ) and disappears.

Suddenly, Daniel meets his old acquaintance - Eve, who tells him that the Reaper is cheating on him, but after her own betrayal in the final of Battle Out of Hell , Daniel treats her with disbelief and ignores her words. Throughout the game, Eve has been trying all the time to convince Garner that everything around is not what it seems, and the only reason that Daniel so successfully destroys the demons and does not obey their power is that he did not really die.

Finally, after the murder of the formidable Necrogiant, the Swamp critter and Alastor, Daniel meets the Reaper and gives him the “Soul Catcher”, but he claims that only 6,999 souls have been collected, and only one is missing to complete the transaction, directly hinting the hero to Eve. Daniel refuses to kill Eve, although she agrees to death. Then the Reaper kills the girl himself. With the help of Soul Catcher, Daniel begins a battle with him and, with great effort, defeats the Reaper. At the site of the murdered appears portal, where Daniel immediately goes. The Soul Trapper remains in Purgatory.

After that, the hero wakes up and is surprised to find that he is alive and is in the hospital room, partially paralyzed. It turns out that all this time he was in a coma and was forced to fight the army of demons in Purgatory due to the fault of the Reaper. At this time, Eve appears before him. The girl says that the Reaper did not die at all, but again went to Hell. Plus, with the help of his 7,000 souls, he will free his brothers, the terrible Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Pestilence, Hunger and Death, and with them will begin the Day of Judgment on Earth. Eve asks the hero to confront them, but Daniel doubts that he is able to fight evil again without the strength that he had in Purgatory. Then Eve reassures him and says that the task of Daniel will only help in the difficult struggle and be an ally of a certain warrior. At that moment, the door to the chamber opens and against the backdrop of bright light appears the demonic silhouette of Belial, the protagonist of Painkiller: Overdose .

The game sounds ambient compositions from the original game . The authors of the battle music are metal band Ojo Rojo, as well as tracks from the original Mech metal band.

Players reacted to the game very ambiguously - on the one hand, the developers managed to convey the atmosphere of the game, however, the fact that less than 1/3 of the levels were transferred to the re-release (the most interesting levels are acquired as separately downloaded content ), and there are a number of noticeable shortcomings, entailed increase the percentage of negative reviews regarding the game. On the Metacritic website , the total score of the game based on player reviews was 6.5 points ^[10] .

Critics also shared the opinion of the players; the average score for a Metacritic game based on 33 reviews of professional publications is 64% ^[10] . The site GameSpot gave the game 7 points out of 10, noting that the re-release “plays and looks good in itself, but suffers from too many repetitive elements and limited features” ^[11] . The IGN editors set the game 5 points out of 10, noting problems with the AI ​​of the enemies, a mediocre set of levels, and in the end advised to play the original game ^[12] .

The Russian magazine Igromania gave the game 4 points, writing: “The meat fighters have long escaped from the miserable ghetto, but Painkiller, like his hero, is doomed to wander in eternal darkness.” ^[13] Reviewer of the Game Mail.Ru On the contrary, Kirill Voloshin gave the game 7.5 points, praising the network aspect of the game, which, in his opinion, gave the project a second wind ^[14] .

• https://web.archive.org/web/20110203053116/http://painkillergame.com/ - The official site dedicated to the PainKiller video game series